There is little that the UK stock market enjoys more than a juicy bid story and investors were able to tuck into a rare feast yesterday.

Not only did Guardian Royal Exchange (GRE), long regarded as a takeover target, announce that it was considering a number of offers but two of the market's biggest engineering companies, BTR and Siebe, unveiled a link-up.

And there was plenty of bid talk outside the UK as well, with Deutsche Bank of Germany linking up with Bankers Trust of the US and two US high-tech companies, America Online (AOL) and Netscape in talks.

All this gave the usual lift to equity markets, as not only did shares in the companies concerned forge ahead but traders searched around for the next potential raft of targets. The only bid disappointment came when Bertelsmann, the German media group, dismissed talk of a move for EMI - the latter had been driven up by speculation on Friday.

The FTSE 100 index duly enjoyed its third successive session of three-digit gains, closing up 130.9 at 5,848.4. BTR, GRE and Siebe were the three best performers in the blue-chip index.

The UK market's strength was broadly in line with other European markets, with the Dax in Frankfurt up 2.3 per cent and the Swiss market 2.8 per cent. Wall Street was also supportive, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average up more than 80 points, and within 100 points of its all-time closing high, by the time London finished trading.

Footsie has now risen around 1,200 points from the low recorded on October 5th, with the help of US and UK rate cuts.

Volume was 843.4 million shares by the 6 p.m. count, of which 45 per cent was in non-Footsie stocks.