RAMSEY CROOKALL & CO
1 APRIL 2011 MIDDAY REPORT
Shares have got off to a decent start, clawing back some of the losses that came in
late trading yesterday.
Banks, which had been awaiting yesterday afternoon’s banking stress test results nervously,
are leading the way today, with Barclays, Lloyds and RBS all higher.
In other news, Marks & Spencer is having a second crack at the French market, 10 years after
it withdrew from the country. A first store will be opened on Paris’s Champs Elysees later
this year, selling women’s clothing and food. A website will also be launched, serving the
whole of France.
BP has signed four new production sharing contracts over 4,800 square kilometres of coal bed
methane areas in South Kalimantan, Indonesia. The contracts were awarded to BP and its local
partners by the Indonesian government. In one of the contracts, BP will have 44% ownership
over the contract, while in the other three it will have 45%.
The North American spending spree of British Gas owner Centrica shows no sign of abating,
with the company paying C$47m (£30m) in cash to Shell Canada Energy for some natural gas
assets located in the Wildcat Hills region of Alberta.
UK companies lagged behind their peers in Northern Europe in the year to 31 March, the
private equity group 3i said in a trading update ahead of its full-year results. The firm
said it had seen good progress across the whole business. The shares are almost 4% lower.
“There have, however, been marked regional differences, with strong growth in Northern
Europe counterbalanced by weaker performance from UK companies,” chief executive Michael
Queen said.
THE FTSE 100 AT NOON IS UP 49 @ 5958
THE DOW JONES CLOSED DOWN 30 @ 12,319
THE NASDAQ COMP CLOSED UP 4 @ 2781
Exchange Rates
GBP – USD 1.607
GBP - EURO 1.135
Friday 1st, April 2011 01:10pm.
