RAMSEY CROOKALL & CO

MIDDAY REPORT

29 SEPTEMBER 2010

London has given back its early gains despite the decent close on Wall Street overnight.

In company news, British Airways has finally signed its well-flagged transatlantic ticketing and revenue share agreement with American Airlines and merger partner Iberia. It starts in October and is worth a combined $7bn in annual revenues.

Smiths Group has ramped up full-year headline profit by 17% and is delivering on its cost savings ahead of plan, but the diversified high-tech group warns that growth in both sales and profit will be slower this year.

Miners are the main fallers alongside the normal Wednesday ex-dividends, which this time includes Drax and Inmarsat.

Also,fast growing pizza delivery franchise operator Domino’s Pizza has not been growing quite so fast in the last three months but still notched up an enviable increase in like for like (LFL) sales. In the 13 weeks to 26 September LFL sales were 9.9% higher than a year earlier, while in the year to date LFL sales were up 12.5% on a year earlier.

Finally, energy supplier Scottish and Southern Energy (SSE) has assured the market it is on course to deliver on its pledge of above-inflation dividend increases.



THE FTSE 100 AT 12.45 IS DOWN 3 @ 5574

THE DOW JONES CLOSED ` UP 46 @ 10,858

THE NASDAQ COMP CLOSED UP 9 @ 2379

Exchange Rates

GBP – USD 1. 5785 GBP – EUR 1. 1595

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