LONDON (ShareCast) - Friends Provident led the Footsie fallers on reports that Swiss Re is no longer interested in buying the UK company’s Lombard division. Swiss Life was believed to be the only insurance company interested in buying the division, with only private equity firms now remaining in the race.

Elsewhere in the insurance sector Legal & General, Standard Life and Old Mutual were left nursing heavy losses as sector consolidation hopes fade.

Engineering and project management firm AMEC edged higher after UBS raised its price target from 1,030p to 1,050p.

The company said yesterday that it continues to make "excellent progress" as it raises its margin expectation for 2008.

“With both our end markets and trading performance remaining strong, our level of confidence in the outturn for this year is increased and we have raised our margin expectation for 2008 to 6.5%,” it said. Earlier expectations were of a 6% increase in margins.

FTSE 100 - Risers
Tesco (TSCO) 359.20p +5.18%
ITV (ITV) 42.60p +3.65%
Morrison (Wm) Supermarkets (MRW) 254.50p +2.83%
Rio Tinto (RIO) 5,600.00p +2.56%
Next (NXT) 873.00p +2.28%
AstraZeneca (AZN) 2,356.00p +1.82%
Xstrata (XTA) 3,764.00p +1.46%
Cable & Wireless (CW.) 155.90p +1.37%
Amec (AMEC) 886.00p +1.37%
Sage Group (SGE) 193.50p +1.20%

FTSE 100 - Fallers
Friends Provident (FP.) 94.50p -6.90%
British Airways (BAY) 197.00p -5.74%
TUI Travel (TT.) 178.10p -5.27%
ICAP (IAP) 470.50p -4.95%
Legal & General Group (LGEN) 94.50p -4.83%
Barclays (BARC) 279.00p -4.45%
Wolseley (WOS) 313.00p -4.43%
Standard Life (SL.) 201.00p -4.40%
Cairn Energy (CNE) 3,000.00p -4.25%
Old Mutual (OML) 88.10p -4.24%

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