The FTSE 100 dipped at the start of the week as mining stocks weighed on the top share index.
ENRC (LON:ENRC) led the decline, down 2.9%, followed by Kazakhmys (LON:KAZ), Antofagasta (LON:ANTO) and Vedanta Resources (LON:VED), which all lost just under 2% as the price of copper hit a three-week low.
They dragged the Footsie down 16 points or 0.25% to 6,312.
Free-to-air broadcaster ITV (LON:ITV) rose to the top of the pile, up 3% on renewed bid speculation on the back of Liberty Global’s recent takeover of cable company Virgin Media.
It was trailed by National Grid (LON:NG) and Aggreko (LON:AGK), which powered 1.4% and 1.7% higher respectively.
African Barrick Gold (LON:ABG) and iron ore pellet producer Ferrexpo (LON:FXPO) continued to the mining decline on the second tier, down over 3% each. Embattled Indonesian coal miner Bumi (LON:BUMI) meanwhile lifted 3% when Recapital Group sold its 10% stake ahead of the crucial EGM this week.
The big news came from the small caps, with the US on holiday thanks to Presidents' Day.
Phytopharm (LON:PYM) was left with just a fifth of its value after the clinical trial of its Cogane treatment for Parkinson’s disease showed “no beneficial effects”.
No “statistically significant effects or trends towards improvement” were seen in the study of over four hundred randomly-selected people with early-stage Parkinson’s disease.
“We are naturally disappointed with the outcome of this study of Cogane™ in patients with Parkinson's disease,” said CEO Tim Sharpington.
“Cogane™ had demonstrated encouraging efficacy in a wide range of industry standard pre-clinical models but this promise has not translated into clinically meaningful efficacy in this study.”
Shares slumped as much as 80% to just 2p each.
Toledo Mining (LON:TMC) was the star of the show as it leapt 57% after getting a 50p per share offer from major shareholder DMCI Mining.
DMCI Mining, a wholly-owned subsidiary of DMCI Holdings Inc. (DMCI), increased its stake in Toledo on Friday from around 17% to around 38% by purchasing Jason Cropper’s stake at 50p per share.
Cropper sold 10.3mln Toledo shares, representing 20.7% of the issued share capital of the Philippines-focused nickel producer.
The terms value Toledo at around £24.9mln, versus a market capitalisation of £15.2mln on Friday, the day before the bid was announced, with the share price at 30.5p. It is now trading at 48p.
Tertiary Minerals (LON:TYM) also made it way north, up 11%, as did W Resources (LON:WRES) and Sirius Minerals (LON:SXX). The latter continued the small cap mining surge, up 5% after signing a deal with a Swiss specialist that will market around a third of the fertiliser produced by the group’s York Potash Project.
Vatukoula Gold Mines (LON:VGM) shone 6% higher after it unveiled more high grade drill results from its mine in Fiji.
CEO David Paxton called the exploration results “encouraging” as they point to more resource upside within a currently active mining area near the Philip Shaft.
Coloured gem specialist Gemfields (LON:GEM) sparkled 6% higher, followed closely by Kea Petroleum (LON:KEA), which was still rising from Thursday’s news of oil at the Puka-2 well in New Zealand.
Tumbling the other way was Sunrise Resources (LON:SRES), which slipped 24% after the first kimberlite tested has a probable low diamond grade. Executive chairman Patrick Cheetham insisted however that the results do not downgrade the overall prospectivity of the Cue diamond project in Western Australia.