RAMSEY CROOKALL & CO

2nd September 2011

Evening  Report

The FTSE 100 finished down 2.3% at 5292 rocked by weaker-than-expected U.S. employment data showing that the world's biggest economy didn't add a single new job during August.

There was even a revision downwards to last month's figure, so what had already started as a bad day for the FTSE steadily worsened as the session went on, says Capital Spreads. "Even though earlier in the week we've seen poor economic data being followed by a rally in equity markets as investors believe the likelihood of further quantitative easing from the US Fed is greater, today the number was so bad it really added to the concerns that already haunt the market."

Among the fallers is drugs behemoth AstraZeneca (down 3.7%), which has announced generally favourable results of tests of its cholesterol treatment, CRESTOR, though not the knock-out blow versus LIPITOR, the rival treatment from Pfizer, that it might have been hoping for. The study measures changes in plaque levels in coronary arteries using ultrasound imaging. The results for the primary efficacy measure demonstrated a numerically greater reduction in favour of CRESTOR versus atorvastatin but did not reach statistical significance. For the secondary IVUS measure, CRESTOR demonstrated a statistically significant reduction compared with atorvastatin.

Global technology business Smiths Group is to purchase Power Holdings, a designer and manufacturer of specialist power distribution, conditioning and monitoring systems. The purchase price of $235m will be subject to post-closing adjustments with respect to working capital at completion.

Ukrainian iron ore pellet producer Ferrexpo has secured a new credit facility of $420m at a rate two and a quarter points above the London interbank offer rate (LIBOR). The credit facility can be drawn at any time during the loan term which has a maturity of five years including amortization over two years.

London Stock Exchange Group has confirmed it is in discussions with LCH.Clearnet Group regarding a potential takeover of the Anglo-French clearing house.

Catering giant Compass has been on the acquisition trail again, this time gobbling up a new company in its home market rather than the more exotic countries it has been expanding in lately. It has acquired Cygnet Foods, a provider of lunches to more than 450 schools in England. In 2010, Cygnet had revenues of £9.3m and gross assets of £2.2m.













THE FTSE 100 Closed                          Down 126         @    5,292

THE DOW JONES @ 16.45                        Down 169         @   11,323

THE NASDAQ COMP @ 16.45                      Down  36         @   2,509

Exchange Rates

GBP – USD     @ 16.45      1.6211 GBP - EURO   @ 16.45       1.1408