London market gains ground
The London market is gaining ground as tech and telecom shares recover from yesterday's sell-off.
By mid-morning the FTSE 100 Index was up 33.9 points at 5074.7.
Although the Dow Jones closed last night in negative territory, it was only down 11 points, recovering an earlier fall of 120 points.
Chip designer ARM, which was heavily hit by yesterday's sell-off, falling 8%, was today helped by a broker upgrade and rose 9¾p to 181¾p, a 6% rally.
The group, along with computer services group Logica, is in danger of falling out of the Footsie in the next reshuffle on June 12. Logica today rallied 6p to 224p.
The rises helped the techMARK 100 index of UK tech stocks edge up 3.6 points to 994.46, although still below the 1,000 mark, which it slid under for the first time yesterday.
Vodafone, which yesterday accounted for a large proportion of the Footsie's losses, perked up 1¼p at 103p and Cable & Wireless rose 6¾p to 211¾p.
Banks also lent weight, with Barclays up 7½p at 602½p, Royal Bank of Scotland rising 28p at £19.84 and HSBC up 1½p at 831p.
But pharmaceuticals group GlaxoSmithKline edged lower, down 24p at £14.13 .
The group was today reported to have held preliminary merger talks with US firm Bristol-Myers Squibb. Analysts were mixed over whether a deal was unlikely.
Among the smaller stocks, film distribution group Winchester Entertainment plunged 20%, or 5p to 20p after putting out another profits warning.
