A dull day in the markets but the sun shines on Lords

Lords Cricket Ground, headquarters of the English game, was yesterday home to a large part of the commercial and financial establishment as well. A dull day on the markets it may have been, undermined by futures selling, but the sun was shining in St Johns Wood. Even Nick Knight, famously bearish strategist at Nomura, appeared to swap his hair shirt for a white one as his cricketing namesake delighted the crowd with a bullish display of strokeplay.

A good cross section of British industry congregated in the first floor boxes of the Mound stand, with the Williams Holdings and Willis Corroon crowds basking in their unexpected proximity to John Major, who was enjoying John Paul Getty's hospitality. Maximum points on the celebrity front failed to rub off on Williams shares, down 3p to 329p on yet another bad day for diversified industrials. Among that out of favour pack, only Lonrho, relieved to have walked away from Costain's US mines, and Hanson, at a seven-year low, enjoyed the summer weather, up 3p to 166p and 4.25p to 162.25p respectively.

The luvvies were back in the spotlight as a fresh wave of takeover speculation hit the television sector. Latest gossip sees Granada tuning in to Yorkshire- Tyne Tees, up 25p to 1250p, and Carlton poised to swoop on HTV, up 17p to 361p.

Burmah Castrol's Jonathan Fry was seen dipping in and out of his box to confer on the fate of Christian Salvesen, the transport group where he was being groomed for the chair next year and which received an unexpected pounds 1bn tilt this week from rival Hays. Not that he looked overburdened by the worry of it all. There are no plans to abandon the Fry family jaunt to the Rockies this month and the Salvesen board is not even bothering to convene before next Wednesday. With New York investors suggesting Hays may have to pay as much as 450p a share, Salvesen added 12p to close at 361p after Thursday's 60p jump.

Burmah appeared not to miss its ebullient chief executive, closing at 993p, up 6p. Mr Fry, who is a grandson of the legendary Hampshire, Sussex and England batsman CB Fry, yesterday boasted four daughters at the ground. One of the brood, now gainfully employed by Cazenove (Burmah's broker - no connection of course), was busy talking up the price in the RTZ box, up 25p to 908p. A copper price rally was also a factor, dealers said.

ICI shrugged off Thursday's 28 per cent profits fall to present a brave face to its guests. Back in the City, however, dealers were no kinder on the former bellwether stock, knocking a further 11p off the price to 750p, almost matching the 17p slide on the announcement of its worse than expected half year results.

Elsewhere in steady trading for a summer Friday, business software group Pegasus jumped 107p to 405p after it confirmed a bid approach. Pegasus hit the headlines briefly in 1992 when, in a precursor to the current bizarre goings on at Eurotherm, its chief executive Jonathan Hubbard-Ford was sacked after seven months in the job only to be called back by a posse of dismayed shareholders including Alistair Ross-Goobey's Hermes, or Postel as it then was.

Magnum Power, the AIM-quoted computer chip recycler whose shares had sunk from a high of 500p, bounced 6p to 46p on a cheerful annual meeting statement. There was strong support too for Danka, the photocopier distributor, hit recently by a profits warning, up 35p to 458p. The market also liked the look of Cairn Energy's rights issue, and siezed on a Kleinwort Benson buy note to push the oil company's shares 30.5p higher to 339p.

On an otherwise quiet corporate day, news that Psion's talks with Amstrad had foundered on price took a heavy toll of Alan Sugar's group just before the market closed. After tumbling 34p to 155p, they edged higher to 160p in the closing minutes of trading. Betacom, 60 per cent owned by Amstrad and due to receive the group's consumer electronics arm as part of the deal, was caught in the crossfire, closing 4.5p lower at 15.5p. Psion added just 3p to 423p.

Blacks Leisure, 40p at the beginning of the year, ran out of steam after a statement at the annual meeting suggesting its recent dramatic growth was unlikely to continue. A big holding in a successful fund run by Mark Slater, son of Jim, Blacks lost 9p, or 5 per cent, to close at 178p.

Lex Service took the splitting of Sir Trevor Chinn's joint roles well. That, and a positive assessment of the new car market, helped the shares add 15p to 363p.

TAKING STOCK

There was no respite for Frost Group yesterday, which closed unchanged at 94p as analysts fretted about the future of the group, caught in the crossfire of the petrol price war between the supermarkets and the big oil companies. The shares, which reached a high of 270p a year ago have been on a slippery slope ever since, with industry observers convinced the big players are intent on squeezing out their smaller competitors.

European Colour added 1p to 80p yesterday, continuing the recovery in sentiment since it became apparent that the pigment maker had been unfairly tarred with the same brush as the hard-pressed commodity chemical manufacturers. Whispers of a deal to be announced next week underpin the shares, which are still 25 per cent off the high of 106p reached last September.