Why Associated British Foods and Bango Beat the FTSE 100 Today

LONDON -- The FTSE 100 is still looking pretty glum, having dropped a further 2% to close at 6,525 points today despite a general uptick for the mining sector. With companies like Tesco and ARM Holdings falling, the overall trend was down.

But even on a day like today, we still saw some rises across the various indexes. Here are two that are looking positive.

Associated British Foods
Associated British Foods shares gained 1.4% to reach 1,837 pence after the firm's wholly owned British Sugar subsidiary announced that it is to redeem some of its debt financing. The firm will repay its entire £150 million, 10.75% redeemable debenture stock 2013 on July 2, with all interest accrued to that date.

The boost has helped the Associated British Foods share price to reverse from recent minor falls -- but it's still up more than 60% over the past 12 months.

Bango
Looking to a much smaller company now, the wonderfully named Bango saw its shares pick up 3.8% to 204 pence. Today's boost came when the mobile web-payments and analytics company announced that it has signed an agreement with Mozilla to offer Bango as an option for content paid for via the Firefox Marketplace app store -- it should be launched this year.

The terms of the deal have not been disclosed, but it's a big win for Bango's technology and services.

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The article Why Associated British Foods and Bango Beat the FTSE 100 Today originally appeared on Fool.com.

Alan Oscroft has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool recommends Associated British Foods. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

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