The supermarket sector was making decent gains on Wednesday as ongoing buyout speculation drove the share price of UK grocer WM Morrison higher in afternoon trade.

The stock was up 4.7% at 243.5p by 15:31, after having hit a 52-week low of 229.9p earlier in the session.

Last week it was reported that the founding family of Morrison, which is thought to have a 9.5% stake, had spoken to private-equity firms to gauge their interest in taking the company private.

According to Reuters, bankers are working on debt financing packages of around £5bn to back a potential sale.

Morrisons is the fourth-largest chain of supermarkets in the UK behind Tesco, Sainsbury and Wal-Mart-owned Asda.

Both Tesco and Sainsbury were trading higher this afternoon, up 1.4% and 0.7%, respectively.


Top performing sectors so far today
Food & Drug Retailers 4,427.27 +1.79%
Forestry & Paper 11,266.84 +1.06%
Industrial Transportation 3,402.60 +1.05%
Aerospace and Defence 4,851.08 +1.00%
Industrial Engineering 10,514.39 +0.66%

Bottom performing sectors so far today
Industrial Metals & Mining 1,093.27 -4.00%
Pharmaceuticals & Biotechnology 12,608.04 -1.12%
Fixed Line Telecommunications 4,766.21 -0.96%
Tobacco 35,550.38 -0.92%
Household Goods & Home Construction 11,804.53 -0.86%

BC

Related share prices
Sainsbury (J) (SBRY) share price
Tesco (TSCO) share price
Morrison (Wm) Supermarkets (MRW) share price