FTSE 250 movers: Sirius and Inmarsat drag mid caps down

Mining group Vedanta Resources and steelmaker Evraz got a boost along with the rest of the mining sector from stronger Chinese manufacturing data as the FTSE lost early gains and headed towards the close on Monday in the red.

China's Caixin PMI survey for June came in at 50.4 from 49.6 in May, beating expectations for a drop to 49.8 and marking a three-month high.

Clothing retailer SuperGroup, which was forced to publish highlights of its full-year results early on Friday after a preliminary draft of the numbers was stolen from an employee, confirmed an 18.4% jump in pre-tax profit as like-for-like retail sales grew 12.7%. The owner of the Superdry clothing brand lifted its ordinary dividend by 20.7% to 28p per share.

Canaccord Genuity said: "The key message for us is that the company's strong growth is disciplined and well-planned across channels and geographies as well as being under-pinned by infrastructure investment and product innovation. The brand is in excellent health, and we are now in a phase where we expect recent investment to start to be leveraged."

BGEO Group was a high riser after announcing it intends to split itself in two: a London-listed banking business - Bank of Georgia Group - and a London-listed investment business - BGEO Investments. The board said it believed a demerger of the businesses would deliver “additional long-term value” to shareholders and better growth prospects for both parts.

Broker Numis noted that the targets for these businesses such as a 20% return on equity for BoG and an internal rate of return of 25% for the investment business remain in place as do the senior management teams. As well as all the current assets of the investment business, this company will take control of the property and casualty insurance business and hold a 9.9% stake in BoG.

Among the fallers, Sirius Minerals dropped, with traders suggesting stop-losses were exaggerating the effect. Meanwhile the Whitby Gazette reported that the company had published revised plans for its Yorkshire mine site, designed to simplify the mine infrastructure and make the construction process more efficient.

Satellite specialist Inmarsat was down after reports that its plans to provide in-flight broadband internet access across Europe face a court challenge from rivals ViaSat, Eutelsat and Panasonic. Rival satellite companies have lodged a complaint with the European Court of Justice seeking an injunction on the proposed service, the Telegraph reported, arguing that Inmarsat's 2009 S-Band radio spectrum license was supposed to be used for rural satellite broadband. The European Aviation Network is expected to be launched to the public at the end of the year, although a number of telecoms regulators have yet to approve the proposals.

Acacia Mining was hit by a slipping gold price.

FTSE 250 - Risers

Vedanta Resources (VED) 684.00p 6.54%
Evraz (EVR) 218.70p 5.70%
Supergroup (SGP) 1,559.00p 4.28%
BGEO Group (BGEO) 3,636.00p 4.06%
Tullow Oil (TLW) 156.60p 3.92%
TBC Bank Group (TBCG) 1,638.00p 3.41%
Petrofac Ltd. (PFC) 456.40p 3.26%
Ascential (ASCL) 333.70p 3.12%
Vesuvius (VSVS) 545.50p 2.83%
Electrocomponents (ECM) 592.50p 2.69%

FTSE 250 - Fallers

Sirius Minerals (SXX) 28.59p -5.77%
Inmarsat (ISAT) 735.50p -4.42%
Softcat (SCT) 377.50p -4.26%
Acacia Mining (ACA) 285.30p -4.23%
Hochschild Mining (HOC) 264.80p -3.43%
NMC Health (NMC) 2,112.00p -3.39%
Domino's Pizza Group (DOM) 284.00p -3.37%
Greene King (GNK) 653.00p -3.04%
Rank Group (RNK) 230.10p -2.99%
PayPoint (PAY) 861.50p -2.60%