News

Footsie has closed the morning session in good shape with oil and mining groups going well and Unilever's new chief executive getting a warm response.

The Bank of England sat on its hands again and held interest rates at 5% despite another grim set of monthly statistics from the Halifax on the health of the UK housing market.

The mortgage lender says prices fell by another 1.8% in August and a whopping 12.7% year on year. The drop for the three months to August versus the same time last year was 10.9%.

Oil stocks BP and BG Group are among the top risers following a slight rally in the crude price after the latest in a string of hurricanes, 'Ike', picked up pace in the Atlantic. BP was also helped by news it has signed a memorandum of understanding to restructure TNK-BP, Russia's third largest oil company.

Fuel-thirsty British Airways is the biggest faller, joined in the bottom 10 by the cruise operator Carnival.

Hotel and restaurant group Whitbread is up after it said like-for-like sales across the group rose 7% in the 24 weeks to 14 August, with total sales increasing 14.2%. Positive broker coverage also helped send shares in Whitbread higher.

Cazenove, which reiterated its 'outperform' rating on the stock, said the statement showed that any signs of a slowdown are limited to the group's Costa Coffee chain.It pointed to 'impressive growth' at its Premier Inn hotel chain. Another broker, Investec, repeated its 'buy' advice on Whitbread.

Anglo Dutch consumer group Unilever is teh best performer after it named Nestle's Paul Polman as chief executive Patrick Cescau's replacement. Cescau, who is retiring at the end of the year, has worked for Unilever for the last 35 years and has served as chief executive for the last four.

In broker coverage JP Morgan moved its ratings on technology companies Invensys and Smiths Group in opposite directions on valuation grounds.

It upgraded engineer Invensys to 'neutral' from 'underweight', saying that the US appliance market was near a trough.

In response to press speculation, private equity group Hellman & Friedman has disclosed it is no longer part of the consortium contemplating a bid for publishing group Informa.

Higher costs of raw materials saw own label specialist McBride report a 30% fall in operating profits to £21.4m for the year despite revenue increasing 18% to £700.9m. The group said it had made a satisfactory start to the new year.

Network monitoring firm Endace said its strategy for growth of the business remains on track as it saw continued growth in sales across its main verticals and geographical segments in the first 5 months of the year.

European Islamic Investment Bank said despite challenging market conditions it has continued to progress in the first half of 2008 as it swung back into profit for the period.

First Calgary, the oil and gas company that specializes in Algeria, confirmed that it received a number of proposals, which could lead to the sale of the company or a major asset disposal. The group announced the news late yesterday after shares jumped in London and Toronto.