RAMSEY CROOKALL & CO

EVENING REPORT

23 SEPTEMBER 2010

Expectations of a weak start on Wall Street, after poor US jobless data, sent London shares lower still over the lunch time session, although the markets recovered lost ground during afternoon dealings.

Lloyds and Standard Chartered are the worst performing banking stocks as worries resurface about the prospect of sovereign debt defaults, while HSBC are unchanged as concerns mount that there might be a power struggle at the top as the company looks to replace Trade Minister Stephen Green as chairman.

Among miners Kazakhmys, Antofagasta and Anglo-American are the main casualties as metal prices pause for breath.

Water supplier United Utilities says it is on track to deliver results in line with expectations, with the recent regulatory price review for the 2010 to 2015 period now water under the bridge. Elsewhere in the utilities sector Severn Trent has a fan in Evolution Securities, which thinks the stock looks cheap, particularly as the company “is likely to surprise on the upside when announcing dividend policy in November.”

The last major obstacle to the merger of British Airways and Iberia has been cleared after the Spanish airline backed BA’s plan to tackle its huge pension deficit.

And All Bar One pubs owner Mitchells & Butlers appears to have enjoyed an Indian summer. In the nine weeks to 18 September the group saw like for like (LFL) sales improve by 3.6% on last year’s levels. That was a sharp improvement on the 1.6% year on year advance in LFL sales seen in the first 42 weeks of the fiscal year, and took the LFL improvement over the 51 week period up to 2.0%; Numis Securities had predicted an improvement to 1.8%.

THE FTSE 100 CLOSED DOWN 4 @ 5547

THE DOW JONES AT 4.30 IS UP 14 @ 10,753

THE NASDAQ COMP AT 4.30 IS UP 13 @ 2347

Exchange Rates

GBP – USD 1. 5718 GBP – EUR 1. 1783

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