London afternoon: KNOC ups Dana bid terms

Leading blue-chips continue to drift lower with investors happy to bank the week's profits ahead of the week-end and the announcement of the results of the European banking stress tests at 5:00pm today.Not surprisingly, banks feature prominently among the losers with Standard Chartered, HSBC and Lloyds nursing the biggest losses.Telecoms titan BT is also out of favour after industry watchdog Ofcom ruled out changes to the company's funding that would have allowed it to raise wholesale prices to help close the huge deficit in its pension fund.TUI Travel gives back some of the gains made early in the week as bid speculation fades, while a study by Co-op Travel suggesting travel companies are slashing prices to shift holiday packages will not have helped sentiment either. The best performing blue-chip is chip designer ARM Holdings ahead of interim results next week. Bumper figures from Microsoft to follow those from Apple suggests the company may announce sparkling figures on Tuesday. Microsoft, like Apple, is a user of ARM's intellectual property and has recently signed a multi-year contract to licence ARM technology.Mobile phone network operator Vodafone returned to organic revenue growth in the April to June quarter of 2010 for the first time since the near global recession. Group revenue increased by 4.8% to £11.3bn and group service revenue increased by 4.9% to £10.6bn. United Utilities says current trading reflects lower prices for 2010/11, revenue pressures from reduced water volumes, bad debt and anticipated rise in property rates. However, the firm, which revealed a drop in full-year profits in May due to high borrowing costs, said these negatives are being partly offset by a drop in power costs.Among second-liners Dana Petroleum shoots higher after the Korea National Oil Corporation (KNOC) confirmed it has submitted an indicative bid of 1800p cash per Dana share, an improvement on its original indicative offer of 1700p made on 17 June.Mergers and acquisitions activity is also driving the share price rise of property group St. Modwen, which owns the Elephant & Castle shopping centre in south London.The response to results from Britvic has been sour, even though the soft drinks giant saw revenue increase by 16.2% from a year earlier to £289.5m in its third quarter. The underlying GB, International and Irish businesses saw a combined revenue increase of 6.9%. Oil and gas exploration and production company Salamander Energy has plugged and abandoned its Tom Hum Xanh-1X exploration well, offshore southern Vietnam, but the shares have held up well. "This should not come as too great a shock to the market, as the first well it drilled in this basin also proved to be uncommercial," noted Panmure Gordon.Also in the oil sector, BP has temporarily suspended relief well activities at the MC252 well site in the Gulf of Mexico due to "potentially adverse weather" linked to Tropical Storm Bonnie.Close Brothers still thinks it will deliver a "solid" performance for the full-year, although funds under management eased in the last three months and it's making less per trade at its market making arm.Multi-millionaire property developer Christian Candy's has launched a mandatory offer to buy all the shares in Metals Exploration he doesn't own for 13p each.