Winners and Losers: Online auctioneer fetches best price of 2005

There will have been a good few champagne corks popping at QXL Ricardo over the festive period.

Shares in the online auctioneer were the best performers on the London stock market in 2005, registering an amazing 1,260 per cent rise for the year.

This leaves the group with a market value of £210m and, although some way off the £2bn valuation it notched up during the dot.com boom, investors should not forget that when the bubble burst QXL came within a whisker of collapse.

A major factor behind the extraordinary performance has been a battle between two rival groups of shareholders.

Florissant, backed by Icelandic money, got QXL shares moving early in the year as it built up a 27 per cent stake in the auctioneer and then bid 1,400p a share for the remainder.

However, the stock really took off when Izaki, an Israeli consortium, emerged and bought a 26 per cent shareholding to block the Icelanders' offer.

QXL stock was also boosted by a short position that was slowly, and at great expense, unwound throughout the summer into the rising share price.

But, technical factors aside, 2005 also witnessed an impressive business renaissance at the auctioneer. QXL benefited greatly from its focus on Switzerland, Poland, Denmark and Norway (importantly, its US rival eBay doesn't have a presence in Denmark and Norway).

Its last set of quarterly figures saw the group boast a 64 per cent jump in sales.

Still in the small-cap arena, Elementis enjoyed a 168 per cent rise in its shares over the course of the year as its biggest shareholder, the US investment firm Hannover, pushed through a major restructuring at the chromium maker.

BTG, up 166 per cent, slowly transformed itself into a biotechnology company and now there is new hope that its Varisolve treatment for varicose veins will one day get the green light from US regulators.

The year just gone was also a very important and successful one for SCI Entertainment.

Shares in the computer games developer gained 157 per cent as it not only won control of rival Eidos but also found itself on the receiving end of a takeover approach in late October. These negotiations have proved inconclusive thus far.

Again in the software sector, Autonomy - up 162 per cent - was boosted by a combination of fast-improving profitability, the purchase of California-based rival Verity for £280m and excitement about a Far East joint venture.

In September, Autonomy said it had teamed up with one of China's biggest broadband providers to create a state of the art search engine.

Exposure to the fast-growing Chinese economy was also very important for Charter. The engineer's stock gained 141 per cent.

Meanwhile, the tool hire group Ashtead benefited from a surge in demand for its services in the US following an unusually severe hurricane season. Ashtead shares rose 138 per cent on the year.

However, a look at their performance on a wider time horizon is even more exciting. If readers had bought £100-worth of Ashtead stock on 13 March 2003, their stake would now be worth just under £6,000.

Among blue chips, Persimmon came out on top. The house builder registered an 82 per cent share-price rise, mostly thanks to the City's enthusiasm for its acquisition £640m acquisition of Westbury.

Rolls-Royce, up a slightly more modest 78 per cent, benefited from the general upturn in the commercial aerospace sector which helped it secure a series of engine contracts in India and China.

The mine operators Rio Tinto, Antofagasta and Anglo American all feature on the list of top 10 FTSE 100 performers.

The trio cashed in on record demand for commodities from China.

The list of the blue chip index's worst performers is dominated by retailers. Kingfisher fell 23 per cent, Boots lost 7 per cent and Morrison Supermarkets dropped 6 per cent amid difficult trading condition on the UK's high streets.

Compass, Vodafone and BSkyB all disappointed because of company-specific problems.

The FTSE 250 loser list also has its fair share of retailers, namely MFI Furniture, Topps Tiles and HMV.

Gcap ended down 33 per cent on the year as profits at the radio group evaporated. Currently the group is overhauling its flagship Capital network and has promised fewer adverts in the hope of winning back listeners.

As ever, the small-cap end of the market produced the most spectacular falls.

The insurer Goshawk saw 84 per cent wiped off its stock market value while Sanctuary, the music group, suffered a 94 per cent collapse. Both will struggle to salvage any value for their shareholders in 2006.