Taylor Woodrow's £480m offer for Wilson Connolly boosted the share price of nearly every listed housebuilder. Naturally, the protagonists benefited most – by close of business on Monday, Taywood had increased 24.25p to 252.25p and Wilcon had risen 23.5p to 232p.
But the day's biggest winner was Wilson Bowden, which jumped 27.5p to a year-high of 1097.5p. Perhaps this was the result of Chinese whispers, with several big names being bandied about as potential buyers in the case of further industry consolidation.
One oft-mentioned potential target, Westbury, certainly gained a boost from Taywood. It leapt 22p to 452p. But a housebuilder that missed out and might have wished it was still Sunday was Fairbriar. It slipped from 55p to 47.5p.
As for the construction and building materials sector, it was suffering from an end-of-August dip. Last week Amec fell 7.6% to 266.25p, at least partly as a result of the announcement that its interim profit figure had slipped £5.9m on the same period last year. Carillion also fell 1.3% to 154.5p.
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