John Wood Group, the UK oil services firm, has bucked a recent trend in the European new issue market by pricing towards the top of its range - and is still trading strongly on its debut.

The 195 pence issue price was comfortably in the top half of John Wood's 175 pence to 210 pence bookbuilding range, giving the firm a market capitalisation of £935m (€1.5bn) and making this Scotland's biggest public float since 1993. The stock climbed 12% to 218 pence in early conditional trading on Wednesday morning.