Canadian stock market declines over Valeant's acquisition plan, mining selloff

 Canada's main stock market was on a downward trend on Wednesday, as drug maker Valeant Pharmaceuticals ' new takeover offer for Allergan Inc and mining shares selloff weighed down on the market.
Following Tuesday's slump, the benchmark S&P/TSX composite index was down 47.06 points, or 0.32 percent, to 14,610.96 points. Six of the eight major sectors lost ground with the mining sector leading the losers.
Investors were focusing on the acquisition plan of Valeant Pharmaceuticals, as the Quebec-based drug giant Wednesday increased the cash portion of its takeover offer to buy Allergan, a California-based Botox maker. Valeant announced that it upped the cash component of its stock-and-cash offer by 10 U.S. dollars to 58.30 dollars a share in a deal that could now be worth almost 50 billion Canadian dollars (about 46 billion U.S. dollars).
The acquisition plan had a big negative influence on the stock market as analysts and investors had been expecting a bigger bid. The health care sector dropped 0.8 percent in direct response and Valeant's stock lost 2.08 percent to 138.11 Canadian dollars apiece.
Meanwhile, the mining sector suffered the biggest loss by diving 2.34 percent as the global metals prices moved down. The sector's leader Teck Resources Ltd. tumbled 2.61 percent to 24.58 Canadian dollars. Detour Gold Corp. plunged 3.83 percent to 10.30 Canadian dollars, while gold ore miner Osisko Mining Corp. was down 0.76 percent to 7.79 Canadian dollars.
Financials, the index's most heavily weighted sector, lost 0.21 percent with some big banks giving back.
National Bank of Canada was down 2.49 percent to 45.86 Canadian dollars and TD decreased 0.09 percent to 53.88 Canadian dollars. Bank of Montreal also edged down 0.23 percent to settle at 76.62 Canadian dollars following a surge in the midday trading after the bank reported that its net income for the three months ended April 30 was 1.08 billion Canadian dollars, up 12 percent from last year.
Both energy and industrial sectors advanced, by 0.17 percent and 0.29 percent respectively.
The Canadian currency Wednesday edged down to 0.9191 U.S. dollars from 0.9211 U.S. dollars on Tuesday.