European Markets Update: U.K., Continental Stocks Trade Higher
One thing to remember lately when watching the London stock market: never turn your back on it. Just as you're off getting a cup of coffee, someone like
Bank of Scotland
will pop up and doing something like upping its bid for
National Westminster Bank
(NW)
and suddenly kick-start the rest of the market.
By midmorning, the
FTSE 100
index was trotting along quite nicely with a 40.10-point gain at 6,415.70 as Bank of Scotland sweetened its bid in an attempt to woo NatWest shareholders before the Feb. 14 deadline. Bank of Scotland was down 10 pence at 650 after the news and NatWest was up 37p at 12.71 pounds.
The consensus is that NatWest shareholders should hang around. The Bank of Scotland offer is worth around 14.70 pounds per share, or 24.3 billion pounds. NatWest shares are trading substantially below the offer price because the market thinks this new bid has little or no chance of success.
What everyone wants to know is whether
Royal Bank of Scotland
will re-enter the fray. The betting is that they will. Great, there's nothing like a good old fashioned bid battle to keep the market on its toes. And remember, there are rumors that
Lloyds TSB
may take a potshot at either Bank of Scotland or Royal Bank of Scotland, whichever finishes empty-handed. Lloyds TSB was trading 17p higher at 664.
Cable & Wireless
(CWP)
is the other major company in the bid frame again today with shares up 29p at 13.49 pounds.
The story goes that
Deutsche Telekom
(DT) - Get Report
will make a move for C&W when it sells its stake in
Global One
, the loss-making international telecoms consortium of DT,
France Telecom
(FTE)
and
Sprint
and
Deutsche Telekom's
(DT) - Get Report
.
The sale would appear to be sooner rather than later. FT announced this morning that it would take complete control of the floundering joint venture from the former partners. This news pushed the shares of both former state-run monopolies higher, with FT up 5.30 at 133.20 euros and DT 1.98 higher at 72.68 euros.
In the IT sector,
Misys
fell 20p to 771p on news of a first-half profits decline of 18%. (See the related
Anglo File story.)
Europe's continental bourses powered higher straight from the opening bell mainly from action in the telecom sector, but by midday the market had trimmed these gains. The
Xetra Dax
in Frankfurt was up 0.7% at 7014.41 and the
CAC 40
in Paris was up 0.9% at 5697.90.
Besides the telecom action, other news with big names attached to it had one Frankfurt-based trader noting that, "it's gotten rather busy." Poor guy.
DaimlerChrysler
(DCX)
first became a topic of discussion on the trading floor after it was announced that U.S. co-chairman Robert Eaton was leaving the company solely in the hands of his German counterpart Juergen Schrempp. Later on, however, interest shifted to Italian newspaper reports claiming that DaimlerChrysler and
Fiat
were in advanced merger talks.
DaimlerChrysler was up 1.89 at 68.99 euros and Fiat was 0.52 higher at 28.93 euros.
