Stock market thrills and spills: R-R down, William Hill up, Apple down.

Rolls-Royce @ 885.5p, -28p (-3.07%)
William Hill @ 345.2p, +7.2p (+2.13%)

Its not enough to net off the speculative taint of an SFO investigation into some of Rolls-Royce's regional dealings with intermediaries but, William Hill looks to be back on the gallop following a renegotiation of its joint bid for Sportingbet although, I would suggest that, this is tempered by the date extension which I assume is Sportingbet holding out for a rival bid to push the price up again. 

But just as Rolls-Royce has burst through into all time highs over the last few days (921p early yesterday), the share price has then implodedfollowing the company statement (http://www.rolls-royce.com: Rolls-Royce reports to the SFO), that they have handed over the findings of an independent investigation of various dealings in Indonesia and China over to the SFO.

Despite not being released until today it seems likely that the related falls started yesterday as the 10p or so increase to 921p melted away. Privileged, but not confidential, information for someone then!

As to William Hill's joint bid for Sportingbet the initial price of 52.5p was raised to 61.1p but poor trading at Sportingbet has seen this price renegotiated down to 56.1p (http://uk.reuters.com: UPDATE 1-William Hill agrees reduced $780 mln Sportingbet bid), with the deadline for a formal bid announcement now pushed out to the 18th December.

Apple @ $538.79, - $37.05 (-6.43%).

Elsewhere, Apple took another blow with the share price falling 6.43% as analysts continue to pick over the struggling company and speculate on market share, margins, stock, ex growth fears, no special dividend ahead of fiscal cliff fears, and historical comparisons to previous "biggest" companies etc, etc, etc.
Perversely one the latest threats appears to be the popularity of Nokia Windows based Lumia phones in the wildest frontier of China (http://www.telegraph.co.uk: Apple suffers worst share price fall in four years as $35bn wiped off tech giant).

Article links:
- http://www.rolls-royce.com: Rolls-Royce reports to the SFO
- http://uk.reuters.com: UPDATE 1-William Hill agrees reduced $780 mln Sportingbet bid
- http://www.telegraph.co.uk: Apple suffers worst share price fall in four years as $35bn wiped off tech giant