After a soft opening, London's blue-chips rallied to carry the Footsie into positive territory.
The FTSE 100 finished up 22 points at 6,950 after the European Central Bank kept interest rates unchanged.
State-controlled lender Lloyds Banking (LON:LLOY) notched up a modest gain as it vowed to fight a high court ruling preventing it from redeeming bonds that pay high rates of interest.
The bank had hoped to save £200mln a year in interest payments by forcing holders of the bonds – which pay rates of between 6% and 16% – to cash in the bonds at their par value.
Lloyds' shares edged up 0.3% to 88.93p.
Consumer electronics retailer Dixons Carphone (LON:DC.) weighed on the top-share index as the shares shed 4.5p at 474.8p, despite a better than expected trading update, which saw it raise its profit forecast for the year.
In the mid-cap space, traders were taking a punt that betting group Ladbrokes (LON:LAD) could get a takeover bid from a rival bookmaker or a private equity bidder.
City traders are speculating that Paddy Power or private investors could table a 175p per share offer for Ladbrokes.
Shares in Ladbrokes rose 2.2p to 122.3p.
The industry has been a hotbed of consolidation activity in recent months, with the latest move being a bid for rival Bwin.party by 888 Holdings.
Down among the small caps, shares in South American copper explorer (LON:MNC) Metminco shot up again today, a surge that has now doubled the price over the last two days.
The company released a statement saying it was unaware of the reason other than to repeat it is working on an updated resource estimate for its Los Calatos project in Peru that “will be released once finalised.”
There is no shortage of copper in South America and bulletin board chatter related to a possible cash producing acquisition or developments in its legal dispute over another project, Mollacas.
Traders had a more prosaic reason, namely that there is chronic lack of liquidity in the shares and buying any sizeable amount requires some effort.
Having jumped almost 50% yesterday and a further 48% today, the shares traded at 0.50p.
Arria NLG (LON:NLG), up 153.7%, was the day's big riser. The natural language generation technology company has moved closer to securing new funding, which is likely to be in the form of an issue of convertible loan stock, with the notes converting into Arria shares at a considerable premium to last night's share price.
Conversely, Ferrum Crescent (LON:FCR) dropped 12% to 0.50p as it said it had granted Principle Monarchy Investments an extension to the deadline for its first funding payment of R2mln. The first funding payment was scheduled to have been made by June 1.