ALTHOUGH comprehensively outshone by the scintillating global stockmarket debut of Deutsche Telekom, London's equity market built modestly on last Friday's excellent showing.
A well received public sector debt repayment for October - the biggest monthly repayment on record - gave a big boost to gilts which, in turn, helped equities recapture initial gains.
Sentiment in the market has been dented over recent sessions by a succession of worrying economic data, implying intensifying inflationary pressures.
A host of takeover stories, some more believable than others, kept the turnover figure ticking over, although as, always on a Monday volumes left much to be desired.
The one ingredient missing for London was a firm performance from Wall Street. The latter, which has posted eight consecutive upside performances to take the Dow Jones Industrial Average through the 6300 level late last week with no trouble at all, was no better than mixed at the outset and dropped back to post a 14 point fall shortly after the opening.
Well after London closed the Dow was trading 10 points lower at 6337. The FTSE 100 eventually closed the session a net 3.9 higher at 3962.1.
Nevertheless, the good news was confined to the leaders. The FTSE Mid-250 was left nursing a 9.7 loss at 4400.2 while the FTSE SmallCap index dipped 1.9 points to 2163.5.
The market made a bright enough start to the session, bolstered by Friday's 35 point jump by the Dow and the good news on the public sector debt repayment of £4.4 billion, way ahead of a consensus repayment figures of around £2 billion.
There was no doubting the day's biggest individual story effecting the market, the rumoured merger of Shell and British Gas.
Although speculation of a bid for Gas from either Shell or BP - has been circulating in the market since the start of the year, the story was given the big treatment by one of the Sunday newspapers and saw Gas shares race ahead.
They jumped over 9 per cent to their best level since May, just prior to the Ofgas proposals on gas transmission prices.
Energy specialists remained sceptical of a full scale merger of Shell and Gas but refused to rule out some sort of deal in the offing, possibly regarding the "take or pay" gas contracts.
Turnover at 6 p.m. was 707.2 million shares; Gas alone accounted for over 10 per cent of, FTSE 100 turnover and almost 5 per cent of the overall total. Customer business on Friday was worth £1.22 billion.
