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Most followed: AstraZeneca, Royal Bank of Scotland, Lloyds Bank, SolGold, Bullabulling Gold

Published: 07:46 02 May 2014 EDT

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The trading update from Royal Bank of Scotland (LON:RBS) is the hot news of the days and for once the state-owned lender turned up trumps.

Shares are on the rise, up 9% at 334p – only another couple of quid to go and the tax-payer will be in profit – after troubled Ulster Bank helped RBS register only its sixth quarterly profit since being rescued.

On the search engines’ news pages, however, it is Lloyds Bank (LON:LLOY) that is garnering the lion’s share of attention in the banking sector, after its trading update yesterday.

Two themes seems to be emerging in the coverage: Lloyds Bank’s return to the ranks of dividend payers (back in the day, the shares were a staple of income funds); and the summer flotation of TSB, the arm that contains the branches Lloyds is obliged to sell off to keep the European Commission off its back.

The bid barney between pharmaceuticals giants Pfizer and AstraZeneca (LON:AZN) is hotting up, with the US firm revising its indicative offer for Astra to 1.845 shares in Pfizer (or “the combined company”, as Pfizer’s carefully worded, politically sensitive statement terms it) plus £15.98 in cash.

Those terms value Astra at around £50, but Astra’s board say they still “substantially undervalue” the company and, seeing as Pfizer’s bid is contingent on the unanimous recommendation of the Astra board, this one is set to run and run.

Among the smaller caps, Aussie gold miners are in focus.

Alan Martin, boss of Brisbane-based SolGold (LON:SOLG), said he believes the Cascabel copper-gold project in northern Ecuador has the potential to be a deposit running to “billions of tonnes”.

His comments accompanied a progress report in which the group revealed it had carried out a second round of magnetic modelling and chosen the location for its seventh exploration hole.

It said the expansion, deepening and further refinement to magnetic modelling confirmed multiple, large targets northwest, west and southeast of the current drilling at Alpala.

As well as attracting lots of mouse clicks on the stock exchange news sites, the SolGold story is also prompting lots of comments on the message boards.

Bullabulling Gold (LON:BGL, ASX:BAB), meanwhile, took a leaf out of the AstraZeneca notebook as it repeated its rejection of the offer from gold miner Norton Gold Fields, recommending shareholders take no action.

A bidder’s statement from Norton, which is offering 7c cash per share, has been dispatched to Bullabulling shareholders.

The top three most heavily traded stocks (in terms of value) include Astra and RBS, to no one’s great surprise, while BP divides the pair at number two. Lloyds is the fourth most heavily traded share.

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