London’s FTSE 100 was up 0.3% at 7,107.81 in afternoon trade on Monday.
Sainsbury’s shares rallied following a report that US private equity firm Apollo is considering a bid for the UK supermarket chain. According to The Sunday Times, Apollo is circling Sainsbury’s with a view to possibly launching bids of more than £7bn, after scouring the industry for takeover targets.
Tesco also gained.
Education publisher Pearson was a high riser after JPMorgan upgraded its recommendation to ‘overweight’ from ‘neutral’, lifting the price target to 960p from 840p as it argued that the shares have oversold.
The bank noted that Pearson stock has underperformed the SXXP by around 30% since January despite the company making strategic progress with the launch of Pearson+ and being six months closer to a return to meaningful US Higher Education growth from 2022e.
On the downside, BT Group was the worst performer on the index as it emerged that CityFibre, a challenger to its Openreach network, was set to secure a £500m investment from a consortium including Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth fund to help drive its ultra-fast broadband roll-out.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the fund is close to buying a minority stake in CityFibre in a deal that would value it at more than $2.7bn. WJS said the investment would be from Abu Dhabi’s Mubadala Investment Co. and the investment arm linked to the family behind IKEA.
FTSE 100 – Risers
Sainsbury (J) (SBRY) 339.90p 15.34%
Burberry Group (BRBY) 1,898.00p 4.00%
Prudential (PRU) 1,496.50p 2.89%
Rolls-Royce Holdings (RR.) 113.28p 2.83%
Glencore (GLEN) 318.35p 2.83%
Evraz (EVR) 559.00p 2.72%
BP (BP.) 295.00p 2.48%
Tesco (TSCO) 252.05p 2.25%
Pearson (PSON) 774.20p 2.14%
B&M European Value Retail S.A. (DI) (BME) 578.60p 1.76%
FTSE 100 – Fallers
BT Group (BT.A) 167.05p -3.66%
SSE (SSE) 1,646.00p -1.23%
Rentokil Initial (RTO) 577.40p -1.16%
Smith & Nephew (SN.) 1,409.50p -1.09%
Pershing Square Holdings Ltd NPV (PSH) 2,515.00p -0.98%
Informa (INF) 525.80p -0.98%
United Utilities Group (UU.) 1,073.50p -0.92%
National Grid (NG.) 970.00p -0.92%
Associated British Foods (ABF) 1,996.50p -0.92%
St James’s Place (STJ) 1,582.00p -0.91%
