BUZZ-Just Retirement: best ever rise on robust results

** Just Retirement (LSE: JRG.L - news) , which was hit by the UK govt's shake-up of pensions in last yr's Budget, poised for its biggest ever 1-day pct rise boosted by deals to take on the risk of companies' final-salary pensions

** Co says H1 annuity sales down only 4 pct, helped by the strong sales of these so-called bulk annuities

** Stock up 17 pct at highest since May 2014, top FTSE 250 riser & easily most actively traded stock on index, with almost 3 times its 90-day daily avg volume having gone through

** The pension reforms announced last yr, which will end need for retirees to use pension savings to buy an income-providing annuity, have hit sales of individual annuities

** Annuities are products offered by insurance cos to retirees, paying them guaranteed income usually until they die

** Reforms hit shares of JR, which sells individual underwritten annuities, which pay a relatively high rate to people with unhealthy lifestyles or poor health

** Stock now trading some 24 pct below its Nov 2013 IPO price of 225p

** Smaller peer Partnership Assurance up nearly 7 pct on a read-across, also in robust volume (RM (LSE: RM.L - news) : tricia.wright1.thomsonreuters.com@reuters.net)