RAMSEY CROOKALL & CO

EVENING REPORT 16 February 2011

Rio Tinto is lower, but elsewhere in mining, African Barrick moves ahead after it revealed full year revenue rose to $309.5m in 2010 from $229.6m in 2009. Profit before tax tripled to $104.9m from $34.4m the year before.

Property stocks were in demand on the back of some favourable broker commentary. HSBC has upgraded British Land to overweight from neutral while Land Securities is upgraded to neutral from underweight.

Engineer GKN and insurer Resolution were the best performing blue-chips, with the former benefiting from a “buy” recommendation from Investec and the latter from an upbeat note from Redburn Partners.

BG Group has announced yet another new discovery of oil in its highly prospective Santos Basin acreage, offshore Brazil but Tullow Oil has plugged and abandoned its Gharabi-1 well, located in Block 6 offshore Mauritania after poor drilling results.

Elsewhere, French oil giant Total is reportedly renegotiating parts of a deal it agreed with Tullow Oil to buy a stake in Tullow's Ugandan oil fields.

Finally engineering contractor WS Atkins is trading in line with expectations, but government spending cuts mean hundreds of jobs are likely to go by the end of the year. The highways business has been hardest hit by the coalition's spending review, forcing Atkins to axe staff despite a strong forward workload of long term contracts in highway services.

THE FTSE 100 CLOSED UP 48 @ 6085

THE DOW JONES AT 4.40 IS UP 58 @ 12,285

THE NASDAQ COMP AT 4.40 IS UP 16 @ 2398

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