Market report: Friday close

THE antics of the Footsie during the triple witching hour as the futures unwound provided almost as much excitement as the World Cup.

On the longest day of the year, which earlier had the shortest attention span for dealers because of events in Japan, there were wide price swings in the 20 minutes of technical unwinding of share-price protections put in place last September.

Dealers' positions in the derivatives market were unwound ahead of expiry and the number of shares traded increased dramatically to more than 1.5bn. The FTSE 100 index had refused to go into positive territory when England held the lead in the crucial World Cup clash for 24 minutes.

Brazil's equaliser after 18 minutes of trading and subsequent winning goal helped depress blue-chips even further. Volume improved during the triple witching and blue-chips went into positive territory for the first time in the session. The FTSE 100 finished up 25 points at 4605.3.

The banking sector revived, led by Barclays, adding 20p to 541p, and HBOS, gaining 24 1/2p to 718p. Lloyds TSB moved ahead 18p to 642p and Royal Bank of Scotland jumped 53p to 1810p. The fallout at Friends Provident continued apace as it tumbled to a low of 129p before a modest rally left the shares 3 1/4p weaker at 135 3/4p. They came to market at 240p, and there is now talk of an £800m bond issue.

Reports that Diageo is close to selling its fast-food chain Burger King to a management team backed by Texas Pacific Group for about £1.6bn sent the shares down 3p to 820p. There was more woe for Reuters as its 51%-owned Tibco, which makes software that links computer systems, said its second-quarter loss had more than trebled. Goldman Sachs marked the shares down to a market performer but they rallied 10 1/2p to 358p.

Domino's Pizza was doing business during the game at its 250 takeaways and, with the opening of another 50 units a year planned by former 3i man Stephen Hemsley, the shares rallied 2p to 86 1/2p. JJB Sports felt the impact of England's departure from the World Cup as its shares fell 8 1/2p to 322 1/2p.

Analysts were on a jolly to Tesco, where they were being shown the intricacies of the supermarket group's personal finance business, visiting a distribution centre and no doubt partaking of hospitality at some of the supermarkets. Tesco shares fell 2 1/4p to 239p.

AstraZeneca fell 87p at one stage on the back of the US Food and Drug Administration giving the thumbsdown to its Casodex drug used for the treatment of prostate cancer. It did not help that there were reports that Percy Barnevik, its chairman, is being investigated by the district prosecutor in Zurich about his pension payment at Swiss-Swedish engineering giant ABB. But Nomura retained its buy recommendation and its shares put on 20p to 2690p.

Shares in The Health Clinic collapsed 51% following 'accounting-issues' disclosures that could lead to the company making a loss. Results for Monday have been postponed, and the shares were down 68p at 74 1/2p.

Housebuilder Westbury said at its annual meeting that its order book is 'significantly ahead' of last year. The shares responded with a 7 1/2p gain to 324 1/2p.

Prices and indices in this section are supplied from various sources and calculated at different times and may not always match those listed in the tables.

Geoff Foster of the Daily Mail on yesterday's trade
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