Market report: Kier still on the ropes after shares suffer second knockdown

Construction firm Kier Group shares tried to rise like Tyson Fury from the canvas on Monday after a price crash on Friday.

The beleaguered company, a big contractor for Crossrail and HS2, saw its shares plunge by a third on Friday afternoon after it went cap in hand to shareholders for £264 million to fix the balance sheet and slash debts.

Some shareholders thought the sell-off had been overdone, triggering an initial 8% bounce in the stock from 510p to 551p.

However, Kier failed to stay on its feet like the Gypsy King and fell back 25.5p to 483p. Six banks will share a £14 million fee pot for the fundraise so at least someone’s happy.

The FTSE 100 was in Trump Bump mode after the G20 summit agreement. The FTSE 100 gained 145.60 points to 7125.84, giving fund managers some festive cheer when they tot up their 2018 performance on New Year’s Eve.

Among the fallers was plastics maker RPC Group, which makes everything from washing-up bottles to HP Sauce containers and is in the midst of an attempted takeover.

Expectations of a high-stakes bidding war between deep-pocketed US private equity behemoths Bain Capital and Apollo Global Management fell after Bain dropped out of the race.

That leaves Apollo, led by art-collecting billionaire Leon Black (owner of one Edvard Munch’s The Scream paintings) in one-on-one talks with the group.

The Takeover Panel has granted an extension until 21 December. The firm’s shares fell 4% or 28.8p at 688p.

The quarterly FTSE 100 reshuffle is tomorrow and one contender for the blue-chip index is under-the-radar British engineering group Spirax-Sarco Engineering, which today offloaded a business it had owned for 30 years.

HygroMatik, based in Hamburg, has been under its wing since 1988 but Spirax decided to let it go when Italian firm Carel came knocking with £52 million. The stock rose 315p to 6450p.

Intellectual property guru IP Group was also in the money after raising £35 million for Ultrahaptics, which makes Minority Report-style technology to enable people to move their fingers in the air to control things.

The fundraising round was led by Mayfair Equity Partners, with Neil Woodford’s Woodford Investment firm also investing. IP shares rose 5.2p, or 4.46%, to 121.8p.