LONDON (Reuters) - Shares in insurer Legal & General (Legal & General Group PLC ORD) rose 3 percent on Wednesday, hitting a near two-year high and outperforming UK peers, with traders citing market talk of bid interest from Zurich Financial .
Legal & General declined to comment.
The UK insurance sector has been buoyed recently by merger and acquisition speculation, after Aviva earlier this week said it had rejected a 5 billion pound bid approach from RSA (RSA Insurance Group PLC ORD 27) for some of its core non-life operations.
On Tuesday, traders also cited talk that France's AXA might be interested in Aviva.
More than 14 million Legal & General shares changed hands by 11:49 BST, against a 90-day daily average of 24.6 million.
(Reporting by Ruppert Pretterklieb, Dominic Lau, Sudip Kar-Gupta and Atul Prakash)