The market is off to a quiet start ahead of George Osborne's Budget announcement at lunchtime. The FTSE nudges ahead 24 points to 6,163.The biggest corporate news is the recommended all-share merger between London Stock Exchange (LSE) and Deutsche Borse. It is called a merger of equals but LSE shareholders will only hold 45.6% of the combined business and the two parties haven't yet agreed a new n

UK shares rally strongly in early trade on Thursday as investors lap up the US Fed's expected 0.25% rate hike overnight, despite a cautious accompanying statement. Wall Street and Asia were firmer overnight, and Europe is up more than 2.7% so far. In London, insurance and financials lead the charge, with Old Mutual (OML) again topping the Footsie leader board with 7.6% gain to 177.6p as it bounces

London shares make stellar gains after a weak opening as oil stocks rally. The benchmark FTSE 100 index rises was rising by 45 points, or 0.7%, to 6,344, with Brent futures hitting $62.75 per barrel on the ICE market. This follows steep declines across he pond on Friday as the Dow Jones staged its biggest one-week slump in three years and West Texas crude futures slipped below $60 per barrel.Barga

Investors looking for a high-yielding bond could do worse than A2D Funding 4.75% 18/12/22 (A2D1:ORB) which is set to begin trading on the London Stock Exchange's Order Book for Retail Bonds (ORB) later this month (21 Oct).Issued by one of Britain's largest housing associations, A2Dominion Housing, the bond pulled in its target £150 million of orders within three days of the offer opening (1 Oct).

Hot on the heels of selling a gold project to an Aim-quoted peer, getting a new boss and proposing to change its name, African Mining & Exploration (AME:AIM) continues its transformation with a move in to mineral sands. What's really grabbing the market's attention is that the project is adjacent to Rio Tinto's (RIO) big Mutamba asset in Mozambique (see pic below), sending the junior's shares up 2