RAMSEY CROOKALL & CO May 8th  2012                                                                                                 Morning Report

The FTSE 100 fell 0.4%, giving up gains as investors worry about the future of Greece following political gridlock after the country's elections. Mining stocks slide in tandem with metal prices.

Insurance group Aviva was performing strongly in early trading after announced that its CEO Andrew Moss has quit with immediate effect after the majority of its shareholders last week voted against the remuneration report.

Tullow Oil jumped after it discovered further oil in the first exploration well at one of its Kenyan projects, increasing its potential 'significantly'. Following an announcement in March that the well had encountered in excess of 20m of net oil pay, the well was then deepened from 1,041m to 1,515m and a total pay count greater than 100m has now been discovered.

Mining group ENRC was in demand after denying a possible spin-off of its operations outside Kazakhstan. There were press reports over the weekend of ENRC demerging its interests in the Democratic Republic of Congo, in addition to its coal mines in Mozambique and iron ore operations in Brazil.

Other mining stocks however were in the red, with Randgold Resources, Polymetal, Vedanta and Xstrata among the worst performers early on.

Exillon Energy saw average production slip in April but the company has revealed that its financial performance has been better than expected, with the average selling price of oil ahead of the budgeted level.

HICL Infrastructure, the infrastructure investment firm, is now the majority stakeholder in the Colchester Garrison private finance initiative (PFI) project after buying up a stake from design and engineering consultancy WS Atkins. Both stocks fell into the red early on.

THE FTSE 100             @ 10:00            Down        24         @      5,631 THE DOW JONES            closed             Down        29       @     13008 THE NASDAQ               closed             Up          1          @      2957 Exchange Rates

GBP – USD       @      10:00                   1.6133 GBP - EURO     @      10:00                   1.2398