The markets opened higher with the Dow gaining 48 points to 17,058 on news that Hewlett-Packard would separate into two publicly traded companies. Nasdaq added 3 points to 4,479.
On the upside
Becton Dickinson will pay a premium of approximately $12.2 billion in cash and stock to acquire CareFusion (NYSE: CFN) .
A runoff between Brazilian pro-business presidential candidate Aecio Neves and President Dilma Rousseff lifted shares of Petrobras (NYSE: PBR).
Unilife (Nasdaq: UNIS) signed a contract to be the sole global provider of cartridge based wearable injectors for Sanofi's large dose volume drugs.
On the downside
Sunesis Pharmaceuticals (Nasdaq: SNSS) reported disappointing results from a Phase 3 VALOR trial of vosaroxin and cytarabine in patients with first relapsed or refractory acute myeloid leukemia.
Alcobra (Nasdaq: ADHD) reported disappointed results from a Phase III study of Metadoxine Extended Release in adult with ADHD.
Leerink downgraded Tekmira Pharmaceuticals (Nasdaq: TKMR) from an Outperform rating to a Market Perform rating.
In the broad market, advancing issues outpaced decliners by a margin of more than 2 to 1 on the NYSE and by nearly 5 to 4 on Nasdaq. The broader S&P 500 rose 6 points to 1974. Bitcoin gained $28 to $327.
Hewlett-Packard splits, markets rise
October 06, 2014 at 10:43 AM EDT