Johnson Matthey Share News (JMAT)

LONDON (Alliance News) - The following stocks are the leading risers and fallers on the main London indices midday Friday.

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FTSE 100 - WINNERS

Whitbread, up 3.3%, is the leading blue-chip gainer. JP Morgan has upgraded the company to Overweight from Neutral on the back of strong UK macro trends, which it expects to drive upgrades to revenue per available room into 2014. The investment bank has increased is estimates and now expects Whitbread's Premier Inn to record RevPAR growth of 3.6% in 2014, a 5% increase in 2015 and a 4.3% rise in 2016. JP Morgan also increased Whitbread's price target to 3,720 pence from 3,280p.

Tullow Oil is up 2.2%. The company said it has made a fifth consecutive oil discovery in its rift basin site onshore Northern Nigeria. Tullow discovered and sampled moveable oil with an estimated 100 metres of net oil pay in good quality sandstone reservoirs at the Agete-1 exploration well in Block 13T. Tullow has a 50% interest in the well.

Johnson Matthey, up 1.2%, continues to gain after the company said Thursday that pretax profit jumped 12% to GBP202.1 million for the six months ended September 30 from GBP180.1 million the previous year. Sales increased 31% to GBP6.41 billion from GBP4.89 billion.

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FTSE 100 - LOSERS

TUI Travel, down 5.1%. Norwegian shipping magnate John Fredriksen is increasing his shareholding in Europe's largest tour operator TUI AG to more than 20% and simultaneously selling his entire stake in its TUI Travel subsidiary, Reuters reports citing his aide Tor Olav Troim. Reuters quoted Troim saying that not only had Fredriksen made money with the deal on Thursday, he had strengthened his influence in TUI AG should he decide to renew efforts to merge the two companies.

Antofagasta, down 1.3%. The company continues to slide after commodity strategists at UBS Thursday warned that they expect supply to outstrip demand in the near term, anticipating copper prices to fall 12% year-on-year in 2014, and remain depressed until 2017.

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FTSE 250 - WINNERS

Essar Energy climbs 8.6% after it said major shareholder Essar Global Fund Ltd. will sell enough shares privately to ensure that the company meets the FTSE UK Index Series minimum free float requirement of 25%, but no more. "EGFL believes that the shares of Essar Energy represent exceptional value and will therefore only sell such minimum number of its shares in the company to enable Essar Energy PLC to meet the minimum free float requirement," the company said in a statement.

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AIM - WINNERS

Clear Leisure jumps 85%. The company said it has received an unsolicited, but binding and fully-financed offer from Milan based building contractor Generali Investimenti Holding to acquire the company’s entire holding in Mediapolis SpA. It said that if it accepts the offer, Generali can either pay EUR20 million in cash, or EUR30 million in a mixture of cash and assets. If it takes the first option, the Italian company would pay EUR7 million to Clear Leisure and EUR13 million to settle a debt to the company. If it takes the second option, it would settle the debt and transfer EUR17 million of unencumbered real estate assets to Clear Leisure. The cash only payment option is equivalent to more than 3 pence a share, while the cash plus assets options is equivalent to more than 7.15 pence a share.

Thor Mining, up 21%. Thor has received high-grade gold assay results from its Spring Hill project in Australia's Northern Territory, including one assay of more than 100 grammes a tonne of gold. "Insufficient information exists currently to assess true widths of mineralisation, or how it may affect further planned work, however, the grades are clearly above those seen at Spring Hill in recent times," it said in a statement.

Sports Stars Media is up 8.8% after it signed an agreement with South Korean mobile applications provider SMARTSTUDY for the pre-installation of its Gombby Green Island series into Samsung mobile devices. The two year non-exclusive agreement begins in December and is worldwide except for Spain and Portugal.

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AIM - LOSERS

Environmental Recycling Technologies is off 16% after its UK licensee, 2K Manufacturing Ltd, went into administration. 2K Manufacturing produced flat sheet product Ecosheet under licence in the UK using Environmental Recycling's technology.

Stellar Diamonds is down 8.4% despite reporting that its pretax loss narrowed in its full year. Stellar Diamonds, which did not post any revenues this year, said it was hit by increased impairment charges of USD2 million, up from USD1.4 million the previous year, following an impairment review of the exploration and evaluation expenditure at the company's Droujba project in the Republic Of Guinea.

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By James Kemp; jameskemp@alliancenews.com; @jamespkemp

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