Market report: Friday close

Malcolm Withers12 April 2012

DRUGS giant

GlaxoSmithKline's

A cool £8.4bn was wiped from the share price as dealers were amused to see that on Monday it had bought back 600,000 shares at 1620.93p a share. Today they were down more than 8%, or 140p, at 1471p.

Chief executive Jean-Pierre Garnier admitted that he could not pass up a good acquisition however. A Glaxo bid for US owned Bristol-Myers Squibb may not be just a rumour. But it was not all doom and gloom in the drugs sector.

Shire Pharmaceuticals shone thanks to US regulatory approval for its hyperactivity drug Adderall. It led the blue-chip winners with a rise of 13 3/4p to 659p.

Engineer

Jarvis's shares leaped 21p to 342p despite the company's problems with the rail crash at Potters Bar.

After ending a five-day losing streak yesterday, the Footsie was unable to overcome the the setback represented by the fall in value of Glaxo and ended the day off 6.2 points at 5169.1.

Diageo has come back from its high of 940 1/2p since the beginning of the month but recognition of its defensive qualities in poor markets on the back of a Deutsche Bank upgrade to buy lifted its shares 38 1/2p to 876 1/2p today.

Vodafone, ahead of its full-year results next week, added 2 1/4p to 113p. MmO2 added 3/4p to 47 1/4p.

Tomkins's sale of its Lasco composites division for $43.5m (£30m) lifted its shares 2 1/4p to 266p. Rank Group benefited from that analysts visit to a Birmingham casino last week as UBS Warburg upgraded its shares to a buy from a hold adding 6 1/4p to its price at 277 1/4p.

RMC has completed the sale of its Ytong aerated concrete products division for £175m as part of its promise to reduce debt below £1bn. Its shares added 2p to 738p.

Enthusiasts for Punch Taverns were able to raise a glass of good cheer as it ended its first week on the LSE with a 4 1/2p gain to 247p, having come to the market with a revised flotation price of 230p on Tuesday.

Trader Simon Cawkwell admits to having 45 positions open on his short-selling list. He claims to have made £1.6m from shorting shares in 16 months.

Man Group added 10p to 970p on the back of yesterday's big acquisition. His other shorting interests did much better. EasyJet fell 15p to 485p. Kensington Group slipped 4 1/2p to 274 1/2p and Eidos was down 3p to 157p.

SkyePharma's new product portfolio is the envy of many of the biotechs and the shares added 1/2p to 78p. Prime Minister Tony Blair's pledge to make Britain the centre of stem-cell research lifted the biotechs led by Celltech, which added 36p to 671p. Cambridge Antibody jumped 76p to 1171p, accompanied by Oxford Glyco up 12 1/2p to 382 1/2p.

P&O Princess the luxury cruise liner group slipped 6p to 449p on reports that US group Carnival may have to sell Cunard to buy the business.

Geoff Foster of the Daily Mail on yesterday's trade
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