There was more good news for Mondas shareholders as the software group unveiled yet another contract win from a major bank. Turbo Genset put on 0.5p to 33.5p after securing a £1.4m order for its power electronics division Intelligent Power Systems. Scipher, the technology developer, was unchanged at 3.5p despite the purchase of 100,000 shares at 3.2p by Rudolph Burger, the group’s chief executive. The buying follows disastrous interim results from Scipher earlier this week, which caused the company’s shares to halve. Lansdowne Partners, the hedge fund which recently registered an impressive return on its investment in Manchester United, disclosed a 3 per cent stake in oil explorer Regal Petroleum, down 0.5p to 120p.

There was some interesting data on director share dealings from financial information provider Knowledge Technology Solutions. The company found that there were 3,505 director share purchases totalling more than £70m during the six months to 12 December and 804 sales valued at a staggering £437m. The research also reveals that the leisure, entertainment and hotels sector had the highest value of sold shares by directors, more than £71m in just 47 transactions. Market gossip on Woolworths has been pretty much all negative over the past two weeks with dealers reporting talk of weak trading at the retailer in the run up to Christmas.

Informa put on 23p to 325p after UBS upgraded the stock to “buy” from “neutral” and raised its price target to 375p from 320p. UBS justified the upgrade by pointing to recent upbeat statements from Informa’s competitors, namely United Business Media. The broker also applauded the group’s most up- to-date acquisitions, which it believes have greatly enhanced the quality of its portfolio of assets. JP Morgan conceded this point but argued the stock’s potential upside easily compensates for this risk.