Energean surges after striking £600m oil deal

OIL business Energean has put a rocket under its Mediterranean expansion plans with a £600m deal to buy assets from French company EDF.

The purchase significantly widens Energean’s presence in the Med, giving it sites in Egypt, Italy and Algeria, as well as in the North Sea.

Investors hailed the deal as a potential game-changer, pushing shares up almost 13.6pc, or 114p, to an all-time high of 955p.

Energean announced a £210m share placing to help fund the transaction.

The company listed on the London Stock Exchange 15 months ago and was promoted to the FTSE 250 just weeks later.

It already produces oil and gas in Greece, but the jewel in Energean’s crown is a huge gas field off Israel that is not due to go live until early 2021.

With this headline project still in the pipeline, Energean sometimes goes a little under the radar compared with some of its other mid-cap peers.

But according to chief executive Mathios Rigas, some of its new assets will not stay in its hands for very long. He said that it will look to sell North Sea fields acquired from EDF because it is not interested in the area.

Perhaps Greek boss Rigas’s rule that the company only does business within a three-hour flight time from Athens has something to do with it, too.

Thanks to the boost from Energean, the FTSE 250 managed to end the day just in the black. The mid-cap index rose 0.03pc, or 6.78 points, to 19797.61.

But in an almost mirror-image fall, the FTSE 100 fell 0.08pc, or 5.74 points, to 7603.58. Trading in London and other major European stock exchanges was muted as US markets were closed for the July 4 Independence Day holiday.

Dragging on the Footsie, however, were Coke bottling company

Coca-Cola HBC and British Airways owner IAG.

The two steepest fallers of the day were both ex-dividend, meaning that anybody who bought their stock from yesterday would not be entitled to receive the next pay-out to shareholders. Going ex-dividend usually weighs on a company’s share price, but these were quite steep drops nonetheless.

Coca-Cola HBC shares closed down 6.7pc, or 207p, to 2867p, while IAG’s stock tumbled 6pc, or 29.2p, to 457.7p.

Shares in blue-chip housebuilders Taylor Wimpey and Berkeley

Group lost a bit of steam after rival Persimmon said its half-year sales had fallen for the first time in eight years.

Persimmon shares ended 1.2pc lower, down 23.5p, at 1964p, while Taylor shares shed 0.7pc, or 1.05p, to 161.15p, and Berkeley lost 1pc, or 40p, to end down at 3793p. Fashion house Burberry rose by 1.9pc, or 37p, to 1949.5p, after investment bank Mainfirst upgraded its stock from ‘neutral’ to ‘outperform’.

Mainfirst brokers praised the work done to spruce up the company’s product lines and keep costs from spiralling under new creative director Riccardo Tisci. But fellow Footsie stalwart

Glencore ended the day 1.5pc, or 4.15p, down at 272.7p, after it announced the Congolese army had been deployed to one of its mines following a landslide that killed 43 people who had been working illegally at the site.

The Swiss miner and commodities trader said the armed forces were dispersing miners from the area around the copper and cobalt mine, which is run by one of its subsidiaries.

It came after illegal miners – trespassers who do not work for Glencore and sneak into its mine to do their own digging – ignored a deadline to leave the site on Tuesday.