Miners were generally performing well on Friday, clawing back some of yesterday's losses, but utilities are out of favour, especially National Grid, after JP Morgan Cazenove downgraded the stock to "underweight" from "neutral".

Traders are still drumming their fingers, waiting impatiently for the independent directors of Xstrata to indicate whether they have been persuaded of the merits of the revised offer from Glencore. The deadline for the board's response to the proposed "take it or leave it" offer is on Monday. Both stocks could be found in the bottom 10 mid-afternoon on Friday.

The Sage Group has acquired EBS Empresa Brasileira de Sistemas, a provider of accounting, business management and tax software in Brazil. The acquisition will cost the group up to £10.6m, including a performance related sum of £1.8m.

Property company British Land has offloaded seven food stores to institutional investors. The company sold the gaggle of supermarkets at prices in line with March valuations to raise £118m, of which British Land's share is £62m. The stores were sold at net initial yields of between 4.95% and 5.7%.

Pearson is at the head of the pack, rising on the back of an upgade out from analysts at Exane to outperform.


FTSE 100 - Risers
Evraz (EVR) 267.50p +2.57%
Pearson (PSON) 1,212.00p +2.54%
Vedanta Resources (VED) 1,078.00p +2.28%
Lloyds Banking Group (LLOY) 40.17p +2.17%
Royal Bank of Scotland Group (RBS) 274.30p +2.16%
Sainsbury (J) (SBRY) 348.00p +1.75%
Petrofac Ltd. (PFC) 1,640.00p +1.67%
Amec (AMEC) 1,161.00p +1.57%
Standard Chartered (STAN) 1,483.00p +1.54%
BT Group (BT.A) 231.80p +1.49%

FTSE 100 - Fallers
Imperial Tobacco Group (IMT) 2,354.00p -1.88%
Reckitt Benckiser Group (RB.) 3,608.00p -1.66%
Xstrata (XTA) 1,032.50p -1.57%
Glencore International (GLEN) 363.40p -1.29%
ITV (ITV) 90.00p -1.26%
British American Tobacco (BATS) 3,207.50p -0.97%
SABMiller (SAB) 2,701.50p -0.86%
National Grid (NG.) 688.00p -0.86%
ICAP (IAP) 338.10p -0.85%
United Utilities Group (UU.) 725.00p -0.68%

NR

Related share prices
United Utilities Group (UU.) share price
British Land Co (BLND) share price
Sage Group (SGE) share price
Xstrata (XTA) share price
National Grid (NG.) share price
Vedanta Resources (VED) share price
Glencore Xstrata (GLEN) share price
Evraz (EVR) share price