There was a much better feel to the London stock market yesterday as the FTSE 100's real heavyweights, notably BP Amoco, Shell, Vodafone AirTouch and Lloyds, provided the main driving force behind the benchmark index. Added to that were another sprinkling of hard and rumoured takeover stories, especially in the cable/telecoms arena, plenty of positive corporate news and a good opening performance by Wall Street.

Marketmakers said the institutions had moved back into the stock market with gusto after the recent minor setback and were concentrating their firepower on the highly liquid stocks.

And there was no shortage of drama late in the session as Whitbread pulled out of the race to buy Allied Domecq's pubs and retail businesses after the referral of its bid to the Competition Commission. That helped the Whitbread share price move ahead in the dying minutes.

Turnover in equities was 1.1 billion shares, with non-FTSE 100 stocks accounting for 51 per cent of the total.