ALL Street provided the main boost to the London market yesterday with strong gains on Friday and again yesterday afternoon sending leading shares racing.
The market shrugged off figures showing industrial production growing strongly a string of leading companies trading without the dividend payout.
Analysts warned that the market's euphoria could evaporate later this week depending on hints by the Chancellor in his Mansion House speech on Thursday about what he is likely to include in the budget on July 2nd.
The FTSE100 index was in good form as it posted a gain of 41.7 to 4686.7
Airport operator BAA produced results in line with forecasts and was rewarded with a rise of 4 1/2p to 541 1/2p after it said it was confident of a positive outcome over the Terminal 5 public inquiry.
Another in the money was Welsh utility Hyder which climbed 7p to 825p in early trading on news that its pretax profits for the year to March 31st showed a healthy increase to £208.2 million sterling, including an £88.9 million contribution from Swalec activities, on the previous year's £183.6 million.
South West Water dropped 36p to 697 1/2p, Yorkshire Water dipped 12 1/2p to 372 1/2p and United Utilities shed 36p to 656 1/2p after beginning the week without the benefit of the dividend payout.
Another to go ex dividend was mobile phone group Vodafone, 4p off at 286 1/2p and banknote printer De La Rue, which suffered dismal performance in terms of its share price last week after announcing disappointing results. It was down 25p to 359p.
Burmah Castrol was another trading exdividend, prompting a 29p fall to £10.07 1/2.
The banking sector was buoyed by further talk of a likely bid from NatWest. Abbey National is rumoured to be the most likely target which sent it flying 21p higher to 861 1/2p, while NatWest itself was ahead 38p to 818 1/2p.
Elsewhere, Alliance & Leicester increased 1/2p to 607p while the Halifax gained 12 1/2p to 748p.
Cable & Wireless came in for profit taking following a soaraway performance on Friday when the shares rocketed 76p on news that C&W had broken into the Chinese telecoms market through selling a stake in its Hongkong Telecom arm to China's Government. The shares eased 12p to 561 1/2p.
Food producer Treatt was a major casualty, losing 30 1/2p to 132 1/2p after showing that first half profits had tumbled which coincided with a pessimistic full year outlook by the chairman.
Industrial components distributor Acal was another in the doldrums, down 56p to 416 1/2p following results which came in lower than expectations.
Results from logistics group Christian Salvesen made little impression on the City with its shares unchanged at 236 1/2p, but windfall tax worries unsettled Railtrack as it lost 2p to 646p.
Growing optimism that Germany will throw its weight behind the Eurofighter project boosted British Aerospace 42p to £13.57 1/2.
A buoyant trading update from commercial vehicle specialist Trinity Holdings helped it accelerate 9p to 247 1/2p and the latest hotel deal by Granada went down well in the market.
Raffles, the owner of the famous Singapore hotel, will pay £45 million for the hotel. Granada closed up 12p at 890p.
And Atalantic Telecommunications was boosted 6p to 164 1/2p after receiving a licence to operate telecoms services in the east of Scotland.
