RAMSEY CROOKALL & CO

MIDDAY REPORT 1 February 2011

Overnight gains on Wall Street and a positive session in the Far East sent London's blue chip index past 5,900 in early trading.

Concern over the situation in Egypt eased a little yesterday, though tensions still remain very high and the oil price spiked higher.

Miner, Centamin Egypt said "Recent political events in Egypt have not affected the safety of the company's employees or its day to day operations at its flagship project, Sukari. The company looks forward however to a speedy resolution to the current uncertainty and remains confident that such resolution will not negatively impact on the company's investment." Other miners are going well with Kazakhmys and Antofagasta the top risers.

In expected company news, BP has resumed dividend payments, as expected, with a fourth quarter pay-out of 7c. But it also sprang a small surprise with the announcement of a decision to sell half of its US refining capacity including the troubled Texas City refinery.

Booming demand for mobile phones, tablet computers and other low- powered devices meant 2010 saw the highest ever annual revenues, profits and cash generation for chip designer ARM Holdings. Underlying fourth quarter profits jumped 47% to £47.6m from £32.3m, helping to lift the full year total by 73% to £167.4m.

Finally, mining giant Xstrata produced more coking coal, semi-soft coking coal, mined nickel and refined nickel in 2010 than ever before, while copper, lead and ferrochrome were all up on the year before.The Anglo-Swiss firm ramped up output of Australian coking coal to 7.7m tonnes from 6.4m in 2009.

THE FTSE 100 AT NOON IS UP 56 @ 5919 THE DOW JONES CLOSED UP 68 @ 11,891 THE NASDAQ COMP CLOSED UP 13 @ 2700

Exchange Rates

GBP – USD 1.60 GBP - EURO 1.17