The afternoon session has seen Footsie heading backwards and even dipping below last night's level at one stage, and with company news thin on the ground the temptation for traders to make an early start to the week-end must be high.

Invensys has been usurped from its position as best performing blue-chip but is still sporting a noteworthy gain after the engineer became the exclusive supplier of railway signalling to Chinese rolling stock maker CSR Corporation.

British Gas owner Centrica has stepped up its campaign to secure more of its gas supplies. It has doubled its equity interest in the gas and oil producing Statfjord field in the Norwegian sector of the North Sea to 19.13%.

BP is close to sealing permanently the Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico after a relief well intercepted the original drill hole, which should enable engineers to shut it down completely.

Elsewhere in the oil sector Dana Petroleum, which has been trading below the £18 a share offer price from KNOC, edges back up towards the £18 level on rumours that bidder KNOC is buying shares in the market.

3i is creating an integrated private equity business by merging its buyout and growth capital units. The decision leaves 3i with two business lines - Infrastructure and Private Equity - and expansion into other areas such as debt management are also on the cards, as flagged at the year end.

Business process outsourcing specialist Xchanging has found a replacement for Richard Houghton, who will be quitting as chief financial officer (CFO) next month. Houghton's replacement is ex-Tomkins CFO Ken Lever, who will join the Xchanging board on 5 October 2010

Domino Printing is a strong performer. The provider of industrial ink jet and laser printing equipment said trading conditions continued to improve over the summer months and it is running ahead of expectations. Sales revenues in the May to August period were 20% higher than in the same months of 2009. Like for like sales increased by 16%.

Peri-Peri chicken chain Nando's is adding burgers and souvlaki to its menu with the agreed takeover of restaurant group Clapham House for £30m. Capricorn Ventures, Nando's owner, has pitched its offer at 74p per share cash, a 31% premium to the price before talks started, which has been recommended by Clapham's directors.

Pubs group Mitchells & Butlers is paying Restaurant Group £19.5m in cash for its Ha Ha Bar & Grill chain. It's expected the deal for the 22 sites will complete on 3 October when the transformation into 12 All Bar One pubs, six Browns restaurants and four other M&B brands will begin.

Among smaller companies, shares in Caledon Resources climbed after the Australian coal miner confirmed it has received another approach.

For the second Friday in a row the share price of miner Herencia Resources has surged, with the cause of this week's spike being a mineral resource update for the Paguanta project in northern Chile .

Related share prices
BP (BP.) share price
Centrica (CNA) share price
3i Group (III) share price
Antofagasta (ANTO) share price
Domino Printing Sciences (DNO) share price
Dana Petroleum (DNX) share price
Xchanging (XCH) share price
Mitchells & Butlers (MAB) share price
Clapham House Group (CPH) share price
Vedanta Resources (VED) share price
Kazakhmys (KAZ) share price
Herencia Resources (HER) share price