Market report: Aveva buoyed by bid hopes

The talk helped Aveva outperform the FTSE 250, which closed up 21.2 points at 16,050.16. After rising a brisk 0.7pc a day earlier following forecast-beating US jobs numbers, the benchmark FTSE 100 paused for breath on Friday and crept up just 0.84 of a point to 6,866.05, taking its gain for the week to 1.6pc. With the US market closed for Independence Day, volumes were low.

easyJet, up 13 at £13.61, was among the biggest blue-chip risers following well-received passenger numbers for June, which showed a 10.1pc increase on the same month last year. Vodafone put on 1.8 to 198.35p, helped by analysts at heavyweight broker Citigroup, who added the shares to their so-called European “focus list”. The telecoms giant “wins the prize for the 'worst performing big-cap high dividend yield stock’ year-to-date”, in part because bid speculation has faded, they said.

“Vodafone’s underperformance and de-rating means that it looks super-cheap relative to the European telecom sector, the market, government bond yields, credit and against other high dividend yield stocks.”

Similarly, a UBS upgrade to “buy” boosted Computacenter 36 to 665p. But Go-Ahead lost 27p to £23.80 after influential bank Goldman Sachs struck the transport group from its “conviction buy” list.

Outside the FTSE 250, a second acquisition in two days saw buyers chase Xchanging 16¾ higher to 173p. The outsourcer said it had spent £64.1m on the European businesses of US company Agencyport Software, having announced on Thursday that it would buy another insurance software business for as much as £21m. Agencyport Europe supplies software to the property, casualty and health insurance markets.

Finally blinkx, the online video search group that plunged on a profit warning earlier this week, rallied 3 to 33¾p, a rise that some traders attributed to bid talk.

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