RAMSEY CROOKALL & CO

EVENING REPORT 17th January 2011

Leading shares lost ground over the lunchtime session, taking the Footsie back below the 6,000 level, with financials and miners featuring prominently among the losers.

Miners such as Kazakhmys and Fresnillo were out of favour amid lower metals prices after China increased reserve requirements for banks in an attempt to curb inflation, while in the financial sector banks were nervous ahead of this afternoon’s meeting of European finance ministers to discuss the European sovereign debt situation. Fund manager Schroders, meanwhile, is down in the dumps after UBS downgraded the stock to “neutral” from “buy”.

BP was in demand after the oil giant announced a controversial landmark deal with Rosneft, the Russian state oil company

Coal miner UK Coal increased fourth quarter total production to 2.3m tonnes compared to 0.2m tonnes the same quarter a year earlier. Total production for the year ended 25 December 2010 rose to 7.2mt compared to 7mt the year before.

Glaxosmithkline, the pharma giant, announced that it expects to record a legal charge for the fourth quarter of 2010 of GBP2.2 billion, equating to an after tax cost of GBP1.8 billion. The charge primarily relates to additional provisioning in respect of the investigation by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Colorado into the Group's U.S. sales and promotional practices and for product liability cases regarding Avandia.  In July 2010 the company took a provision for product liability cases relating to the product that had been settled or received at that time. On this news Glaxo lost 33p over the course of the afternoon to close down 20p for the day at £12.05p.

THE FTSE 100 CLOSED DOWN 16 @ 5985 THE DOW JONES AT 4.45PM IS UP 55 @ 11,787 THE NASDAQ COMP AT 4.45PM IS UP 20 @ 2755

Exchange Rates

GBP – USD 1.59 GBP – EUR 1.19