RAMSEY CROOKALL & CO

EVENING REPORT 20th DECEMBER 2010

The FTSE 100 hovered around 5,900 points following a mixed start on Wall Street.

Snow-affected stocks such as British Airways and many of the major retailers also had losses.

Arctic conditions hurt retailers at their busiest and most crucial time of the year. Next, Marks & Spencer, Tesco, Dixons, Debenhams, Mothercare and Dunelm are all lower, but off their worst levels. Tesco closed down 3p at 430p.

Elsewhere, banks have recovered from a mixed morning. Barclays, Royal Bank of Scotland and HSBC are up, while Lloyds is down after RBS cut the target price on its rival to 105p from 120p.

Scottish port operator Forth Ports said it is on course to achieve targets for 2010 as momentum at its ports continues. Underlying pre-tax profit for the full year is in line with company expectations, the group said in a company update. Overall trading within the ports in Scotland and Tilbury remains in line with the group's expectations despite the recent spell of severe winter weather.

Finally, Soco International has started drilling the wildcat exploration well Bayingu-1 (BYU-1) in the Nganzi Block, onshore the Democratic Republic of Congo (Kinshasa). It’s expected to take the oil explorer, which has a 65% working interest in Nganzi through an 85%-owned subsidiary, 25 days to reach target depth of about 2,520 metres.

THE FTSE 100 CLOSED UP 19 @ 5891

THE DOW JONES AT 4.30 IS DOWN 38 @ 11,453

THE NASDAQ COMP AT 4.30 IS` DOWN 3 @ 2639

Exchange Rates

GBP – USD 1.55 GBP – EUR 1.18