The big mover of the day was private equity firm SVG Capital, which jumped over 20% after revealing that it return up to £170m to shareholders via share buy-backs and tender offers as part of a new investment strategy.

SVG reported that it had strengthened its balance sheet with cash balances standing at around £125m, reducing its debt to £137m or 13% of shareholders' funds.

Retailers were out of favour despite economic data revealing that retail sales volumes and consumer confidence improved in December. Carpetright and JD Sports Fashion were falling 7.6% and 4.8%, respectively.

Engineering firm Wood Group rose strongly after its subsidiary Mustang won a contract for a deep water production facility in the Gulf of Mexico. The customer, US outfit Anadarko Petroleum, expects the site to produce 80,000 barrels of oil per day and 450 million standard cubic feet of gas per day.

Petropavlovsk, the Russia-focused mining company, rose after saying that it will replace its existing Chief Executive, Dr. Pavel Maslovskiy, with Sergey Ermolenko who has held management positions with the firm since its founding in 1994. Maslovskiy has been elected to membership of the Amur region Duma and nominated to become a member of the Federation Council of Russia, which is the upper house in the Russian Parliament.

National Express edged higher after saying that full-year profits are expected to be in line with previous forecasts. The bus and train group said it had seen revenues and profits grow across all divisions in 2011.

Infrastructure investment firm HICL Infrastructure nudged lower after acquiring investments in 26 PFI/PPP (private finance initiative/public-private partnership) projects from two infrastructure funds managed by Barclays Infrastructure Funds Management.

BC


FTSE 250 - Risers
SVG Capital (SVI) 199.20p +20.65%
International Personal Finance (IPF) 164.30p +4.98%
UBM (UBM) 467.70p +4.40%
New World Resources A Shares (NWR) 426.20p +4.10%
Moneysupermarket.com Group (MONY) 101.20p +4.06%
Balfour Beatty (BBY) 258.50p +4.02%
Talvivaara Mining Company (TALV) 207.00p +4.02%
Aegis Group (AGS) 139.20p +3.80%
Wood Group (John) (WG.) 644.00p +3.79%
Informa (INF) 345.40p +3.72%

FTSE 250 - Fallers
Carpetright (CPR) 467.80p -7.64%
JD Sports Fashion (JD.) 615.00p -4.80%
Genus (GNS) 1,010.00p -4.27%
Ocado Group (OCDO) 57.55p -2.79%
Euromoney Institutional Investor (ERM) 626.50p -2.64%
Drax Group (DRX) 523.50p -2.33%
KCOM Group (KCOM) 65.60p -2.09%
Cable & Wireless Communications (CWC) 37.53p -1.93%
JPMorgan Indian Inv Trust (JII) 311.00p -1.89%
JPMorgan Russian Securities (JRS) 478.80p -1.89%

Related share prices
National Express Group (NEX) share price
Carpetright (CPR) share price
JD Sports Fashion (JD.) share price
SVG Capital (SVI) share price
Wood Group (John) (WG.) share price
HICL Infrastructure Company Ltd (HICL) share price