Shares of greeting card supplier Fine Art Developments took off this week as 700,000 shares, or one per cent of the company's capital, was purchased in two deals at around 120 pence - last week the price was below £1.

In these days a bid may be suspected, but equally likely is an opportunist purchase by an investor noting a modest anticipated price/earnings ratio of 8.5 on City forecasts of £18m profits for the year to March. Meanwhile the company can make no comment in advance of the results announcement expected in a month's time.

Filtronic moved up 52 pence to 846p as the market reflected on the news from mobile phone operator One-2-One. In a bold move the operator has reduced off peak call prices to levels below that of BT - hastening the day when mobile phones handle more calls than fixed wire telephony. All this does no harm to Filtronic, one of the world's key suppliers of equipment for cellular radio transmission stations.

Professor David Rhodes' progress with Filtronic is following the successful path of two other well known entrepreneurs who have recently accepted bids for their companies. Tom Farmer of Kwik Fit and Kevin McDonald of Polypipe have agreed bids of £1bn and £337m respectively for the companies which they founded around thirty years ago.

Peter Black's share price moved up a further twelve pence to 344p following the announcement of £21.7m profits for the year to January, before tax and exceptional items. Chairman Gordon Black vas upbeat about "the positive trend of current trading. The company is on track for another successful year."

Most of the company's increased sales came from the inclusion of Ferrosan UK for the first time, but all divisions achieved an increase in profitability in spite of tough conditions for principal customer Marks & Spencer.

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