Market report: Thursday close

WALL Street marked the second anniversary of 9.11 with an early rally, helping London stocks to narrow their losses. The benchmark FTSE 100 ended off 9.9 points at 4242.2.

Financials and insurers were stronger despite rumours about potential rights issues in the insurance sector, following last week's £960m deeply-discounted call by Royal & SunAlliance. RSA rallied 1p to 114 1/4p.

Life assurer Aviva quelled rights gossip following its £1.2bn raising of subordinated debt and its shares rose 1 3/4p to 509 1/2p. Legal & General rose 3/4p to 98 3/4p as Merrill Lynch upped its target price to 115p from 103p. There remain worries about its exposure to global equity markets.

Since her appointment as chief executive of WH Smith there has been nothing but bad news coming out of the troubled High Street retailer for Kate Swann. A profits warning, blamed on the heatwave keeping shoppers out of stores and a series of lossmaking US hotels and airports businesses, has seen its shares slide from a July high of 409p to 330p. Today, the 38-year-old, still at GUS working out her contract, received a piece of good news. CSFB has upgraded its rating to neutral from underperform, though it has cut its target price to 330p. There is still talk of a predator for WH Smith and it rallied 12 3/4p to 351 3/4p.

Reuters suffered another setback as Goldman Sachs turned negative on the information provider, sending it down 4p to 227p.

Bid talk failed to lift housebuilder Redrow, down 4p at 343 1/2p. Its shares recently soared to a five-year high of 355p on the back of developments across the country. These are not in the £300,000-plus bracket of house sales that has been hardest hit by the absence of buyers. Its land bank looks extremely good with margins and returns on capital among the best in the industry. Rumoured suitor Persimmon is in the same bracket. It rose 14 1/2p to 555p.

Cash-desperate London Town hopes to raise £2.17m via an open offer of five new shares at 5p for one. It lost 3 1/2p to 21p.

A hush-hush $50,000 (£31,000) contract with researchers for the US Air Force into carbon fibre ceramic materials produced by Surface Transforms sent the AIM-listed group soaring 29 1/2p to 52p.

Biotech group Galen Holdings dominated the FTSE 250 risers with a gain of 49p to 657 1/2p following a deal with US pharmaceuticals group Barr Laboratories on two of its oral contraceptive products.

Conroy Diamonds fell 1/4p to 8 1/4p as the AIM-listed group, prospecting in the Armagh-Monaghan Gold Belt, raised £1.25m with a share placing at 5p.

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