Market report: Monday close

HAVE we seen the top of the market in City speculators' favourite

The shares slid 4p to 227½p after hedge fund Toscafield, its biggest independent shareholder, sold its entire 6.66m shares, almost 15% of the firm. Toscafield is the vehicle of Martin 'Rottweiler' Hughes, who walks away from Biofuels with a big profit.

He has watched as the shares raced up from 66p shortly after floating last summer to a peak of 302p last month. It is not known what price Hughes sold at or to whom. He topped up his holding last month with a parcel of shares at 230p each.

The rest of the market edged ahead, with prices trading in a narrow band in light turnover. The FTSE 100 index closed up 15.6 points at 4864.9 underpinned by opening gains for the Dow Jones Industrial Average in New York this afternoon.

Electronic Data Processing firmed 3½p to 76½p after some big parcels of shares went through on the ticker late on Friday at a sizeable premium to the ruling price. Five lines totalling 1.65m shares were traded by broker KBC Peel Hunt at 79p.

Estate agent Savills climbed 60½p to 645½p as a line of 1.66m shares went through at 350p. A total of 3.5m shares were traded with broker Panmure Gordon said to be trying to buy a parcel of 3m.

Edinburgh Oil & Gas jumped 44½p to 294½p on news of a bid approach. Orange-Nassau of the Netherlands and Dyas UK are looking to make an offer of about £120m. City speculators say this could be the first bid of many in the sector.

BP, up 7p at 539p, and Shell, 6p better at 478p, are due to give trading updates this week.

Reuters fell 6¾p to 412¼p. Broker Goldman Sachs is not impressed with the group's decision to unload its remaining 62% interest in electronic shares trader Instinet for a knockdown price. The news agency and financial information systems supplier is reckoned to have been offered $1.17bn (£611m) by the US Nasdaq market.

Goldman has told clients this is about 25% below what the business is worth. Deutsche Bank continues to rate Reuters a buy and Merrill Lynch reckons the company has negotiated a good deal.

Ten days to the General Election, and that seems an opportune time for political pollster and market researcher YouGov to make its bow as a public company.

Broker Noble has placed 2.25m new shares and 2.2m existing ones at 135p, valuing the business at £18m. It also makes a multi-millionaire of Stephan Shakespeare, who helped found the company with Lord Archer just before the last election. He continues to own 25%. There are also big windfalls for political commentator Peter Kellner, who chairs the company, and the BBC's John Humphrys, who owns 200,000 shares. They started trading at 143½p before touching 146½p.

It was also the first day on the Alternative Investment Market (Aim) for Spectrum Interactive, which operates some 10,000 phone boxes and internet telephone connections in the UK and Germany. A total of 7.4m shares were placed at 93p by Seymour Pierce at 93p, valuing the outfit at £31.5m. The price opened at 95½p before trading at 94½p.

Casinos operator London Clubs slid 1¾p to 129p. Malaysian conglomerate Genting Berhad has bought 15.8m more shares and now has 29.9%.