London’s FTSE 250 was up 0.1% at 17,508.76 in afternoon trade on Friday.
HGCapital Trust was a high riser after saying it will invest around £17.1m in Norwegian enterprise software group Visma.
On the downside, oilfield services company Petrofac was in the red after a downgrade to ‘market perform’ from ‘outperform’ at Bernstein.
Silver and gold miner Hochschild Mining lost ground as gold prices fell.
Bellway was weaker as Deutsche Bank cut its rating on shares of the housebuilder to ‘hold’ from ‘buy’, arguing the stock is largely “up with events”.
“Bellway elicits numerous adjectives and ‘pragmatic, sensible and cautious’ can quickly morph into ‘tepid, dreary and negative’, depending on the zeitgeist,” DB said. “Its recent update evoked a negative reaction, reflecting concerns over productivity levels (so subjective in reality it is hard to make useful comparisons with peers) and a slew of additional costs.”
Deutsche cuts it price target on the stock to 2,422p from 3,093p.
FTSE 250 – Risers
Watches of Switzerland Group (WOSG) 337.50p 9.40%
Polypipe Group (PLP) 424.00p 7.07%
HGCapital Trust (HGT) 267.00p 6.59%
Bank of Georgia Group (BGEO) 920.00p 6.36%
Provident Financial (PFG) 188.80p 5.24%
Cineworld Group (CINE) 51.12p 4.90%
Workspace Group (WKP) 599.50p 3.99%
easyJet (EZJ) 575.80p 3.86%
Trainline (TRN) 377.80p 3.62%
Mitchells & Butlers (MAB) 165.60p 3.50%
FTSE 250 – Fallers
Petrofac Ltd. (PFC) 167.00p -4.63%
Royal Mail (RMG) 186.05p -4.59%
Hochschild Mining (HOC) 239.80p -4.39%
Aggreko (AGK) 458.60p -3.82%
Network International Holdings (NETW) 382.40p -3.73%
Oxford Instruments (OXIG) 1,440.00p -3.61%
Bellway (BWY) 2,359.00p -3.20%
Oxford Biomedica (OXB) 796.00p -3.16%
Vivo Energy (VVO) 71.70p -3.11%
Renishaw (RSW) 4,608.00p -3.07%