Mohamed A El-Erian, chief executive of investment management firm Pacific Investment Management Company (Pimco), told CNBC that Spain and Portugal are likely follow Ireland in drawing on the European Union’s bailout fund.

Mr El-Erian, whose company has more than $1 trillion under management said the EU has not taken control of the crisis.

“As long as they’re being seen as reactive we’re going to have a slow-motion wreck going on on in Europe. We’re going to wake up and it’s going to be a new country we’re talking about.”

Mr El-Erian warned that continuing solvency problems would undermine any hopes of recovery.

“Unless we see more than just liquidity support, unless we see something that deals with the balance sheets, expect this contagion to go up,” he said.

“Having seen the highly encouraging results from the first logs, the LWD, PEX and CMR, on this well, plus accompanying oil shows, it is extremely disappointing that the subsequent wireline logs and fluids sampling have dashed all the earlier promise of this being Desire’s first oil discovery in the North Falkland Basin. Despite this setback, the presence of hydrocarbons and good reservoir development have been identified in a number of the Rachel fan sands and we therefore continue to believe in the prospectivity of the East Flank Play fairway for future oil discoveries.”

· Revision of water resistivity parameters indicates that the main 8m sand has only residual oil and that the mobile fluid is water. The deeper sands are still interpreted to be oil bearing, but those are thin and poor quality sandstones.

· Desire has about £75m cash at the moment (a little less after all Rachel North expenses are paid), which is sufficient for two more wells and 3D seismic data.

· The result is clearly extremely disappointing for Desire (92.5%), who will now move to the Dawn/Jacinta location where the risking was unchanged after Rockhopper’s Sea Lion discovery. For Rockhopper too, with 7.5% of Rachel North, this is a jolt. We continue to think that commerciality in the basin will depend on finding more reserves than Sea Lion looks likely to deliver at the moment, and that some diversification of development risk will be beneficial.

Well the management might be about to deliver us a crate full of “I told you so”. On Friday, the group’s shares jumped sharply, finishing the day at 170p — only 10p off the price at which the company floated in July. They have traded as low as 123½p in the intervening months.

Such a sharp jump would normally have traders suspecting a takeover approach. This can never be ruled out, but those close to the company say there is no predator lurking.

It’s possible that they would be last to know, and Amazon, Google or maybe even Marks & Spencer is about to table a knockout bid, but it’s more likely the shares are finally finding some fans among institutional investors.

The float in Ocado is not that big — only 55% of its equity is publicly traded — so it doesn’t take much to get the shares moving. If it makes its forecast numbers at the end of the year, which it is likely to do, that will help investor sentiment and could keep the share price momentum going. If it goes past the magic 180p, it will be a nice Christmas present for the company — and a painful lesson for the hundreds of hedge fund traders who have taken a short position on the stock, betting it would go down.