Sector movers: Engineering, oilfield service companies keep London market in the green

Industrial engineering and oilfield services stocks kept the London market in positive territory on Tuesday as fears of Greece defaulting on its debt appeared to be receding.At 1545 BST, the blue chip FTSE 100 was trading up 0.34% or 23.22 points at 6,848.890 as the headline Markit/HSBC Chinese manufacturing sector purchasing managers' (PMI) index rose to a reading of 49.6 from 49.2 in the prior month and the US economy showed renewed signs of growth.Engineering stocks were natural gainers as oilfield services company Petrofac (up 6.38%) said it had mostly performed in line with expectations in the first half, though development of a flagship project in the Shetland Islands will incur further costs. Construction on the Laggan-Tormore project is substantially complete and the company is now in the final completion and pre-commissioning-related activities with the aim of delivering first gas in the third quarter.The company's rivals, large and small, benefitted from wider positivity in the sector, as Hunting (up 6.34%), Amec Foster Wheeler (up 1.47%), Lamprell (up 1.00%) and Wood Group (up 0.37%) all traded higher well into the session.The day belonged to Weir Group, which topped the lot as the leading blue chip of the day, leading the session 3.14% or 56p higher at 1,841p atop the FTSE 100 leader board.Beverages companies also performed well courtesy of broker recommendations. Barclays upgraded Greene King (up 2.69%) to 'overweight' from 'equalweight' and raised the target price to 935p from 835p.It said Greene King has one of the strongest investment cases in the sector due to its expansion programme and rising return on capital employed. Barclays pointed to the potential for mid to high single digits earnings growth, augmented by a yield of around 4% yield.Nomura upgraded Diageo (up 1.47%) to 'buy' from 'neutral' and raised the target price to 2,180p from 1,930p."Following recent meetings with the company, we are more confident that the 'bad news flow' for the company is abating and that a recovery in growth should become visible in full-year 2016," said the Japanese bank.The combined effect saw the beverages segment index climb to 14,659.34, up 0.68% or 99.10 points.