Telecoms stocks raise the Footsie

The FTSE 100 Index has put on 52.5 points to 5166.0, recovering more than half of yesterday's losses.

A strong start on Wall Street where the Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed by 75 points early on added to the improved sentiment in the City.

More than 400 million Vodafone shares changed hands as the group closed 3¾p higher at 164¾p after raising more cash to help shave its debts. The group will receive €2.8bn from Siemens for its 50% less two shares holding in a German engineering firm.

Other market heavyweights joined the push into positive territory with BP up 8p at 523p and Shell ahead 5¾p to 460p.

Gallaher closed up 8¾p to 459½p, British American Tobacco rose 11p to 578p while Imperial Tobacco edged forward 12½p to 935½p.

Vodafone's rival mmO2 also pitched in, topping the leader board after unveiling a marketing deal with hand-held computer group Handspring. The group was up 3p at 88p - a rise of 4% and bucking the trend on a day that saw renewed weakness among tech stocks.

Only Arm Holdings also featured on the leader board, up 7½p at 343½p prior to an update by in the US overnight.

Marconi earmarked another 4,000 job cuts and a drop in sales in the third quarter on the previous three months. It fell 10%, or 4p, to 34¾p.

Of the retailers, supermarket chain Tesco overcame early nerves to climb ¾p to 237¾p after posting like-for-like sales growth of 6.2% for the seven weeks to January 5, excluding petrol.

Safeway also recovered early losses to close level despite refurbishment work holding like-for-like sales growth to 4.1% in its third quarter.

The main riser among the major supermarkets was Sainsbury, up 11p to 375½p, as investors reviewed its own Christmas figures, published yesterday.