The first day of trading with the earlier 8 a.m. kick-off time for London's equity market brought the predictable grumbles from dealers and marketmakers but a welcome extension to Friday's more positive trend. Excited by the appearance of a sizeable takeover move - Rolls Royce agreed a £576 million (€898 million) offer for Vickers, the defence/engineering group - and a good finish to Wall Street on Friday evening and again, briefly, at the outset of US trading yesterday - the London market made further progress.

The FTSE 100 index finished 16.7 up at 6,056.5, well off the day's high of 6,094.7, although the junior indices delivered a much less convincing picture.

The FTSE 250 was only 0.7 ahead at 5,854.8 at the close, having been up 18.9 at best, while the SmallCap settled 2.9 at 2,769.3, having been up 5.6 at best.

Turnover in equities reached a highly-respectable 1 billion shares. Activity on most Mondays is usually muted as the big investing institutions generally hold their investment meetings. Dealers insisted yesterday's figure was not boosted by the longer trading hours, but heavy trade in Old Mutual, Vickers and Emerald Energy, with accounted for 14 per cent of the total.