Rolls-Royce shares boost Footsie

Investors lifted Rolls-Royce shares by more than 2% today after welcoming plans by the engines giant to tackle its £1.28 billion pensions deficit.

Rolls was among the biggest movers, rising 10.5p to 478.5p on a pledge to put £500 million towards plugging the pensions gap in return for the agreement of workers to close final salary schemes to new members.

With gaming heavyweight PartyGaming also ahead by almost 4%, the FTSE 100 Index was able to stay close to the 6,000 threshold at 6001.6, a gain of 0.8 points after giving back an advance of 20 points earlier in the session.

PartyGaming was up 5.25p to 150.25p following an broker upgrade from Numis.

Financial services firm Man Group also lifted 16p to 2468p after announcing that its most recent product launch had raised more than 2.3 billion US dollars of client money.

But oil stocks gave back some of their recent strength as the cost of crude steadied around 68 US dollars a barrel. BP fell 2p to 689p, while BG Group faded 8p to 734.5p and Royal Dutch Shell drifted 19p to 1956p.

Miners were also a drag with a fall of 17p to 1117p for BHP Billiton, while the rally by Marks & Spencer appeared to be at an end with shares in the retailer dropping 3p to 586p.

Elsewhere, bar operator Mitchells & Butlers rose 4% or 18.25p to 481.75p after it was reported that the R20 bid vehicle of property tycoon Robert Tchenguiz had financing in place for a bid of 550p a share.

However, Mitchells said today that it would only consider a formal written proposal and none had been received yet.

Menswear retailer Moss Bros was also higher – up 7% or 5.75p to 87p – after reporting its third straight year of sales growth and a 16% hike in profits before restructuring costs.