LONDON -- Optimism from the G20 and hopes that the eurozone leaders are closer to a deal on European borrowing and banking rescues helped support the FTSE 100 (INDEX: ^FTSE) this morning, and it held on to the ground it has gained over the week. By midday, the index was looking stable around the 5,595 mark, up just a few points on the day.
Longer-term movements in the FTSE will, of course, depend on how Europe puts its plans into action and whether the Spanish banking crisis gets any worse -- but for now, at least, Spanish bond yields have dropped back a little to just less than 7%.
Yet even with the uncertain economic backdrop, individual shares can rise following positive news. Here are three names from various FTSE indexes that have soared today.
Flying high
The airline that everyone loves to hate, Ryanair Holdings, was in the news today, as it is responsible for pushing up shares in Irish flag-carrier Aer Lingus (LSE: AERL.L). How so? Well, it's all due to a takeover attempt. Aer Lingus announced this morning that Ryanair intends to make a third offer for 100% of its share capital.
Aer Lingus shareholders were urged to do nothing at this point, but with the share price gaining a nice 13% boost to 1.05 euros, there are clearly a lot of people expecting the bid to succeed. Ryanair shares, meanwhile, gained just 0.02 euros to reach 4 euros.
Respite for Healthcare Locums
Healthcare Locums (LSE: HLO.L), which last year uncovered accounting irregularities in its books and was forced to add up all the sums again, has been facing legal action in the U.S., brought against the company and three of its directors by a number of American funds.
But today we learned that the action is to be dropped by the plaintiffs, with no explanation for their change of heart given. The ending of the action, which had been described by Healthcare Locums chairman Peter Sullivan as an "unwelcome distraction," gave the shares an early 20% boost, but the price has since dropped back to 3.75 pence for an 11% rise on the day.
Video success
Blinkx (LSE: BLNX.L) is an interesting little company. It has developed what people generally consider to be very smart video search software, and with the Web being full of video content these days, there's clearly a market for it.
There are mixed blessing in some of the technology it uses, as it has licensed some clever stuff from search wizard Autonomy. Autonomy has since been bought by Hewlett-Packard, and it is uncertain whether the licensing agreement will be extended.
But there was good news today in the form of a new partnership. Blinkx has teamed up with news network Newsy, which provides multisource, multiplatform video news with the aim of matching context-sensitive advertising to Newsy's news output. The hard-pressed shares regained 3.5 pence for an 8% rise to 41 pence.
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