LONDON (Reuters) - Burberry shares (>> Burberry Group plc) rose nearly 5 percent in solid volumes after financial blog Betaville said, citing sources, that rival U.S. luxury goods company Coach (>> Coach Inc) was working with investment bank Evercore on a potential merger with Burberry.

A Burberry spokesman said the company would not comment on market rumours and speculation.

Burberry shares were up 4.5 percent by 1105 GMT, and were the best-performers on Britain's FTSE 100 blue-chip index <.FTSE>, which was up 0.4 percent.

(Reporting by Vikram Subhedar, Additional reporting by Paul Sandle; Editing by Sudip Kar-Gupta)

Stocks treated in this article : Coach Inc, Burberry Group plc, Coats Group PLC