RAMSEY CROOKALL & CO

MIDDAY REPORT 7 JANUARY 2011

London has fallen back below 6,000 as investors sit on their hands ahead of the non-farm payrolls data coming out of the US this afternoon. Estimates are for about 150,000 new jobs to have been added in December.

Elsewhere, it's a quiet morning so far. There has been a further development in the simmering dispute between shopping centres operator Capital Shopping Centres (CSC) and 5% US shareholder Simon Property. The latter has been critical of CSC's proposed purchase of Manchester's Trafford Centres from Peel Holdings and has been mulling a near-£3bn offer for the UK company.

CSC has sought to head off Simon by revising the terms of the Trafford Centre acquisition. Peel has agreed to value the CSC shares being issued to pay for the transaction at 400p, up from the 368p per share originally agreed, which means CSC will only have to issue 205.9m shares to Peel, down from 224.1m.

Budget airline easyJet sold 7.6% more seats in December than the same time last year and filled its planes slightly better as well. The no-frills carrier flew 3.66m passengers compared with 3.34m in December 2009. That takes the rolling 12-month figure to 49.72, up 7.9% on last year. It made no mention of the snow-related problems that rival British Airways said yesterday had cost it £50m.

Finally, the Christmas snow was no problem for sport-themed fashion chain JD Sports Fashion, which did so well it now thinks full-year profits will beat expectations. Like for like sales for the five weeks ended 1 January grew 2.5% and cumulative like for like sales for the 48 weeks are up 3.1%. They were up 2.8% in the 30 weeks to 28 August.

THE FTSE 100 AT NOON IS DOWN 12 @ 6007

THE DOW JONES CLOSED DOWN 25 @ 11,697

THE NASDAQ COMP CLOSED UP 5 @ 2709

Exchange Rates

GBP – USD 1.54 GBP – EUR 1.19

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