RAMSEY CROOKALL & CO MIDDAY REPORT

17 SEPTEMBER 2010

After yesterday's sluggish performance London has more of a spring in its step today.

Only three blue chips are down at present, with miners again going well after the late rally on Wall Street overnight. Vedanta and Kazakhmys are the sector stars this morning.

Invensys leads the way overall after the engineer became the exclusive supplier of railway signalling to Chinese rolling stock maker CSR Corporation. The shares have moved 15p higher to 292p.

Elsewhere, British Gas owner Centrica has stepped up its campaign to secure more of its gas supplies. It has doubled its equity interest in the gas and oil producing Statfjord field in the Norwegian sector of the North Sea to 19.13%. Centrica shares are 4p higher at 345p.

And BP is close to sealing permanently the Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico after a relief well intercepted the original drillhole, which should enable engineers to shut it down completely. The shares are currently trading at 413p.

Domino Printing, the provider of industrial ink jet and laser printing equipment, said trading conditions continued to improve over the summer months and it is running ahead of expectations. Sales revenues in the May to August period were 20% higher than in the same months of 2009. Like for like sales increased by 16%. Domino shares have responded with a 4% rise to 540p.

And finally, pubs group Mitchells & Butlers is paying Restaurant Group £19.5m in cash for its Ha Ha Bar & Grill chain. It’s expected the deal for the 22 sites will complete on 3 October when the transformation into 12 All Bar One pubs, six Browns restaurants and four other M&B brands will begin.

THE FTSE 100 AT 12.30 IS UP 20 @ 5560

THE DOW JONES CLOSED UP 22 @ 10,594

THE NASDAQ COMP CLOSED UP 1 @ 2303

Exchange Rates

GBP – USD 1. 57 GBP – EUR 1. 197