Mining stocks were making gains on Friday, rebounding after bearing the brunt of 'risk-off' trade over the past few days. Even including today's rally, average share prices in the mining sector are down 3.4 per cent over the week.

Potential merger partners Glencore and Xstrata were performing well in spite of Qatar Holdings' announcement yesterday that it would vote against the proposed tie-up at the shareholder meeting on September 7th. The Xstrata shareholder supports the tie-up but said that "it will not support the proposed merger terms of 2.8 new Glencore shares for every one existing Xstrata share." The Qataris are wanting Glencore to raise the exchange ratio to 3.2. Sector peers Fresnillo, Randgold and Antofagasta were also on the up by midday.

Utilities group SSE was making gains after UBS upgraded its rating for the stock from 'neutral' to 'buy' and hiked its target price by 13% to 1,515p.

Heading the other way was media giant WPP which was extending its losses after having to scale back its full-year like-for-like revenue target yesterday. Societe Generale and Berenberg both reduced their target prices for the stock this morning.


FTSE 100 - Risers
Xstrata (XTA) 930.70p +3.30%
Glencore International (GLEN) 368.20p +3.01%
Aggreko (AGK) 2,367.00p +2.69%
Petrofac Ltd. (PFC) 1,500.00p +2.67%
Babcock International Group (BAB) 936.50p +2.41%
Johnson Matthey (JMAT) 2,412.00p +2.29%
IMI (IMI) 861.00p +2.26%
Burberry Group (BRBY) 1,357.00p +2.18%
Weir Group (WEIR) 1,635.00p +2.12%
Kazakhmys (KAZ) 598.50p +2.05%

FTSE 100 - Fallers
Carnival (CCL) 2,169.00p -0.73%
Eurasian Natural Resources Corp. (ENRC) 304.30p -0.72%
National Grid (NG.) 688.00p -0.72%
Centrica (CNA) 329.20p -0.69%
Sainsbury (J) (SBRY) 330.30p -0.66%
Next (NXT) 3,599.00p -0.53%
Standard Chartered (STAN) 1,394.50p -0.46%
International Consolidated Airlines Group SA (CDI) (IAG) 142.50p -0.42%
Pennon Group (PNN) 741.00p -0.40%
Severn Trent (SVT) 1,749.00p -0.40%

NR

Related share prices
SSE (SSE) share price
WPP (WPP) share price
Antofagasta (ANTO) share price
Randgold Resources Ltd. (RRS) share price
Xstrata (XTA) share price
Fresnillo (FRES) share price
Glencore Xstrata (GLEN) share price