It was another day of good gains all round for London's stock market yesterday, with the FTSE 100 index, Britain's blue-chip benchmark, just missing out on a new closing record, but the junior indices - the FTSE 250 and SmallCap - both recording intra-day and closing peaks.

At the close, the FTSE 100 index was 7.7 higher at 6,653.7, well short of the day's best. At one point Footsie hit 6,694.2, mostly because of an early surge by AstraZeneca.

But the FTSE 250, which is heavily loaded with high-technology stocks, raced higher to close up 43.6 at its peak of 6,243.6. The FTSE SmallCap performed equally well, ending the day 22.9 up at a closing high of 2,892.3, a fraction below its intra-day peak of 2,892.4.

Turnover in equities boomed, reaching 2.6 billion shares, by the 6 p.m. cut-off point, with Vodafone Airtouch accounting for 6.5 per cent of volume.