RP shares close 1.27% higher
Agence France-Presse | 11/05/2009 1:03 PM
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MANILA - Philippine share prices closed 1.27% higher Thursday, driven by expectations that a large block of shares in top power utility Meralco is about to be put on the market, a dealer said.
The composite index added 36.88 points to 2,944.51, while the all shares index gained 1.09% or 19.93 points to 1,846.71.
Turnover was a heavy 2.53 billion shares worth P4.16 billion ($87.41 million), while 62 issues rose, 49 fell and 62 were unchanged.
The peso traded at 47.58 to the dollar in the morning.
"The market is up mainly on corporate mergers and acquisition stories and foreign investments coming in for the last quarter of the year, especially in the mining sector," Nisha Alicer of DA Market Securities told AFP.
"Despite inflation and weaker Asian markets, we managed to rise because of the M&A news on Meralco," Alicer told Dow Jones Newswires.
A move by a son of shopping mall magnate Henry Sy to buy a chunk of Manila Electric Co. (Meralco) from one of the utility's biggest shareholders led other investors in the firm to consider their positions, boosting their market prices.
First Philippine Holdings rose 6.42% to P58, while Benpres Holdings added 0.30% to P4.10.
Metro Pacific Investments Corp., a unit of Hong Kong-listed First Pacific that is looking at buying a stake, gained 3.28% to P3.15.
Meralco was up 1.84% to P221.
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