RAMSEY CROOKALL & CO

8th August 2012

Evening Report

The FTSE 100 closes 0.1% higher at 5845.92, helped by a sharp rebound from Standard Chartered. The economic situation remains grim, as shown by "a rather downbeat press conference from the Bank of England where Governor Mervyn King downgraded growth forecasts for the UK economy, and suggested [it] would continue to grow well below the long-term average for some time to come. Thursday sees a raft of Chinese data releases, following on from the BOJ rate meeting. But macro prints are thin on the ground in Europe.

Following a 16 per cent slump yesterday, emerging markets-focused bank Standard Chartered  lead the risers today. It was revealed yesterday that a US banking regulator accused it of collusion with the government of Iran to hide transactions from authorities.

Rio Tinto, the mining and resources giant, jumped after managing to beat market expectations on earnings in the first half. Mining peers Fresnillo, Randgold and Xstrata were also making gains.

Engineering group GKN was a faller after going ex-dividend - from today, investors will not have the right to the group's latest dividend.

International Airlines Group was also down after its Iberia airline business hedged its 6.66% stake in technology firm Amadeus with Nomura International in an effort to safeguard its holding.

Smiths Group, one of the biggest fallers on the index , was off after a downgrade from Bank of America to underperform from neutral.

Intercontinental Hotels Group for its part has received a downgrade from JP Morgan, to neutral from overweight.

THE FTSE 100             closed            Up       4        @      5,845 THE DOW JONES            @ 17:00           Up       16       @     13184 THE NASDAQ               @ 17:00           Up       2        @      3018 Exchange Rates GBP – USD        @      17:00                  1.5657 GBP - EURO      @      17:00                  1.2664