Online shopping helps Royal Mail post share rally | Business

Royal Mail led a shares rally this morning on the back of resurging optimism about the company’s prospects as people buy more goods online that have to be delivered. Its shares were up 4.4 per cent or 22.1p to 520.6p in morning trading.

BT and Vodafone also rose, as part of a wider rally in the telecoms sector after the US private equity firm KKR proposed to buy Italy’s Telecom Italia. BT was trading up 3.4 per cent or 5.45p to 166.1p, while Vodafone rose 2 per cent or 2.28p to 115.9p.

The FTSE 100 recovered from several days in the doldrums to gain 25.5 points, or 0.35 per cent, to 7,249.11 on excitement that European telecoms deals could be in the offing, while