Mining heavyweights helped to lift the FTSE 100 ever closer towards record highs this morning.
Growing expectations of a pending steel shortage helped to push miners up the blue-chip index. Tangshan, a city within China’s Hebei province, is one of a handful of key industrial areas to accept orders from Beijing to reduce steel production during winter months as the country attempts to lower smog levels.
The news pushed London-listed mining stocks higher. Anglo American topped the risers, gaining 29p to £12.99½, Glencore rose 7p to 344¾p, BHP Billiton climbed 20½p to £13.85½ and Rio Tinto advanced 52p to £35.98.
Shortly before midday the FTSE 100 was trading up 5.54 points, or 0.07 per cent, at 7,517.25. Paddy Power Betfair weighed, after announcing that Breon Corcoran had resigned as chief executive. The gambling group said that Peter Jackson, currently at the helm of Worldpay’s UK operation, will take the helm “in due course”. The company dropped 500p to £74.24.
Having surged after its half-year filing last week Merlin Entertainments slipped back. The company behind Alton Towers, Madame Tussauds and the London Eye shed 10p to 479¼p.
Advertisement
In the mid-caps Just Group picked up 6¾p to 153½p after Fitch assigned the insurer an “A+” rating, concluding that its outlook is “stable”. Qinetiq Group, the engineering group, also rose 11¼p to 246p.
At the other end of the index, however, Ultra Electronics dropped 41p to £20.29 after reporting that revenues had edged lower, from £366.6 million to £366.4 million, in the first six months of the year.
AA trundled to fresh lows, meanwhile, after the roadside recovery group announced last week that it had fired its executive chairman. As details about the departure of Bob Mackenzie, 64, continue to emerge shares in the company dropped 4p to 202½p. Overall, the FTSE 250 dropped 7.9 points, or 0.04 per cent, to 19,961.83.
“With last week providing a whole host of economic and corporate releases of note, this week sees things calm down somewhat on the calendar front,” Joshua Mahony, market analyst at IG, said. “To an extent traders will have to wait three weeks for the next major central bank update . . . For this week, markets will be looking towards a raft of trade figures, beginning with China overnight.”