RAMSEY CROOKALL & CO

31st August 2012

Evening Report

The FTSE 100 pares gains to trade down seven points, after Fed Chairman Bernanke's eagerly- awaited speech at Jackson Hole fails to provide any clear indications as to the Fed's next policy move.

Mining stocks were making gains on Friday, rebounding after bearing the brunt of 'risk-off' trade over the past few days. Even including today's rally, average share prices in the mining sector are down 3.4 per cent over the week.

Potential merger partners Glencore and Xstrata were performing well in spite of Qatar Holdings' announcement yesterday that it would vote against the proposed tie-up at the shareholder meeting on September 7th. The Xstrata shareholder supports the tie-up but said that "it will not support the proposed merger terms of 2.8 new Glencore shares for every one existing Xstrata share." The Qataris are wanting Glencore to raise the exchange ratio to 3.2. Sector peers Fresnillo, Randgold and Antofagasta were also on the up by midday.

Utilities group SSE was making gains after UBS upgraded its rating for the stock from 'neutral' to 'buy' and hiked its target price by 13% to 1,515p.

Heading the other way was media giant WPP which was extending its losses after having to scale back its full-year like-for-like revenue target yesterday. Societe Generale and Berenberg both reduced their target prices for the stock this morning.

Meanwhile, house-builder Redrow was in demand after saying that three investment firms are interested in a takeover, one of which is controlled by the company's Chairman and well-known businessman, Steve Morgan. While the offer of 152p a share represents a 23.8% premium to the 90-day average share price, the stock has risen strongly in recent weeks on speculation, closing yesterday at 151p.

THE FTSE 100             closed        Down     7          @      5,711 THE DOW JONES            @ 17:00      Down     126        @     13127 THE NASDAQ               @ 17:00       Down     22         @      3071 Exchange Rates GBP – USD        @      17:00                 1.5863 GBP - EURO      @      17:00                 1.2614