SHARE prices of the leading British stocks moved higher on the London market yesterday for the fourth successive day, responding to the strong opening performance by Wall Street, which offset disappointing UK economic news on M4 money supply and bank lending.
The market's closing strength was also said by dealers to have reflected a feeling of increasing bullishness surrounding Monday's flotation of Alliance & Leicester, the building society that has converted to a bank, emulating Abbey National.
There was talk in the market just before the close that a predator was stalking A&L. One story suggested that the losers in the race for control of Scottish Amicable, which included Abbey National and Australian Mutual, might be casting an acquisitive eye over A&L.
Another story that did the rounds late in the day was that a bid for Zeneca, the pharmaceuticals group, was finally going to impact on the market on Monday morning.
There was considerable uncertainty surrounding the second timers and smaller stocks, however, with no less than four profit warnings affecting the FTSE 250 and SmallCap indices.
Once again, London's performance took place against a back ground of extremely low turnover, a feature of trading for the past couple of weeks. Turnover yesterday was 679.3 million shares.
