It was a welcome and strongly positive start to the week by London's equity market, with all the main FTSE indices making excellent progress as the long running US presidential election fiasco looked increasingly likely to be resolved with Mr George W. Bush in the driving seat.

A Bush victory has been viewed as the more bullish outcome of the election but his victory, which is still not certain, has been a long time coming.

That view triggered a follow-through of Friday's strong performances by the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the Nasdaq Composite, although the latter failed to hold its best levels as London traders closed their dealing books.

The Nasdaq was around 30 ahead at that point, following Friday's 149-point upsurge. The Dow posted a three-figure gain, having been up 150 at one stage, after climbing 70 on Friday.

Adding to the overall better feel to the London market was a rally by many but once again not all of the tech stocks which took such a hammering in the wake of the shock profits warning issued by Sema, the Anglo-French software group on Friday.

Another big bull point for the market was a fresh burst of takeover speculation in the banking arena, promoted by the weekend press and which suggested that National Australia Bank could be about to launch a £4 billion bid for Alliance & Leicester, long viewed as a potential takeover target.

The Alliance & Leicester bid talk was accompanied by further speculation that any merger attempt by Abbey National and Bank of Scotland might be gate-crashed by Lloyds TSB or another.

Yesterday's performance extended the rise in the index over the past three sessions to 153.3, or 2.5 per cent.