RAMSEY CROOKALL & CO 19th November 2012

Morning Report

The FTSE 100 trades up 1%, maintaining healthy gains. Miners gain following a strong session in Asia and on hopes that US lawmakers are bridging their differences on a series of budget reform measures.

Barclays is up 3.28% after a rating upgrade; while tech stocks like ARM got a boost from  Cisco Systems which said it will buy Meraki Inc in a deal valued around $1.2 billion.

Elsewhere, Ocado is up 22.7% after securing an extension to its capital expenditure facility. Mining stocks were benefitting from the bullish mood this morning with ENRC, Kazakhmys, EVRAZ, Vedanta and Fresnillo making decent gains.

Resources peer BP was also a high riser on reports that it is considering a share repurchase programme of around $4bn after it banks the proceeds of  the TNK-BP sale to Rosneft.

Banking giant HSBC rose after confirming press speculation that it is mulling a sale of its minority stake in Chinese insurance giant Ping An Insurance. HSBC holds a 15.57% stake in Ping An, China's second-largest insurance firm by assets, which is worth an estimated $9.5bn.

Financial services giant Old Mutual was in demand after snapping up a majority stake in Latin American AIVA Business Platforms in an effort to strengthen its distribution capability in selected emerging markets.

Temporary power and temperature control giant Aggreko gained after winning a $75m contract in Côte d'Ivoire to provide short-term power supply. Cruise operator Carnival continued to rise after announcing Friday that it will be paying 50 US cents a share to investors next month as a special dividend, in additional to the previously-announced regular quarterly payout of $0.25 per share.

Quality and safety testing group Intertek fell after admitting that revenue growth slowed down from 29.9% in the first half to 20.1% during the 10 months to the end of October.











THE FTSE 100     @ 10:00     Up    55   @      5779 THE DOW JONES      closed    Up    45   @     12588                                THE NASDAQ         closed    Up    16   @      2853                                                          

Exchange Rates GBP – USD       @ 10:00    1.5884 GBP - EURO     @ 10:00    1.2446

Gold $/ OZ    $1722