Market Report: Embattled G4S becomes the subject of bid chatter

On a slow day of thin trading volumes and little in the way of news to light up dealers’ screens, it was up to the City rumour mill to spice things up. Step forward G4S, the embattled security firm, which became the subject of bid chatter.

The group, which has just been relegated to the FTSE 250 after eight years in the top flight, is said to be being eyed by private equity firms, with an offer price of 300p a share being touted. That’s quite a jump from the current price of 219.5p, after the shares rose by 2.1p yesterday, but it is less than they were worth in April. Since then, the stock has lost almost a third of its value. A spokesperson for G4S declined to comment.

The FTSE 100 rose by 48.26 points to 6,083.10 – still not the wholehearted Santa Rally that investors were hoping for.

Punters stocked up on oil shares after a bit of festive cheer for the bombed-out sector. The price of a barrel of Brent crude rose by 9 cents to $36.44 – still perilously close to 11-year lows – but that helped BP to gain 9.75p to 344.95p, while merger hopefuls Shell and BG Group put on 42.5p to 1,493.5p and 29.9p to 929.7p, respectively.

Miners also benefited from the so-called “dead-cat bounce”, with battered Anglo American, the Footsie’s worst performer of 2015, rising 16p to 296.5p.

Investors tuned out of ITV, which fell 2.7p to 268.8p as the US entertainment group Comcast, which owns NBCUniversal, denied it was interested in a bid.

A £70,000 share purchase by chief executive Angela Spindler boosted N Brown by 4.8p to 304p. Shares in the FTSE 250 online fashion retailer have been shelved by investors in recent weeks, especially after rival Bonmarché’s profits warning.

On the Aim exchange, investors continued to buy into Watchstone, formerly known as Quindell, which resumed trading this week after returning £414m to long-suffering shareholders. Backers of the insurance software firm, whose past accounting and business practices are under investigation by the Serious Fraud Office, now include the hedge fund Sand Grove Capital Management, which snapped up 5 per cent of company. Its shares leapt 55p, or 28 per cent, to 250p.