News

Footsie is relying heavily on miners for momentum this morning, after the expected bright start to the week in the wake of Wall Street's solid performance last Friday failed to materialise.

Kazakhmys leads the mining sector higher, followed by Xstrata and Vedanta. Oil related stocks are also wanted, with Tullow Oil, Cairn Energy and Amec to the fore.

Banks are the main party-poopers after HBOS upped its impairment and write-off charges to £5.2bn this year after a tough three months since June. HBOS itself is firmer on the day. but others fare less well.

Lloyds TSB warned of a big profit fall due to the impact of market dislocation, insurance related volatility and higher impairments. The merger, though, remains intact with planned savings of £1.5bn though there were no details on where these would arise.

HSBC has been downgraded by US bank Goldman Sachs from "buy" to "neutral". Goldman Sachs sees increasingly tougher conditions for HSBC's banking operations in Asia and the Middle East.

Barclays is another bank suffering from broker downgrades. Merrill Lynch has trimmed its price target from 235p to 204p, while UBS has slashed its price target for Barclays to 170p from 220p, citing dilution of shareholdings following the recently announced fund raising. Panmure Gordon rates the stock a "sell" and believes the boost to capital ratios has come at too high a cost.

Supermarket giant Tesco is on offer as rumours circulate that its latest attempts to squeeze suppliers are meeting with resistance.

Low fares airline Ryanair reported a 47% drop in half year profits as fuel costs more than doubled. Adjusted profit after tax fell to €214.6m in the six month ended 30 September from €407.6m last time as fuel costs jumped to €788.5m from €392.7m. Traffic grew by 19% to 32m, while total revenues grew by 16% to €1.8bn.

Management and consultancy firm WSP Group said its financial results are at or ahead of target and is confident performance for the year will meet its expectations.

Goldplat, the AIM quoted gold producer, said its developments in Kenya are running according to plan, while its processing operations in South Africa and Ghana are producing significant cashflows.

Foam manufacturer Zotefoams said it has traded well in the first nine months but warned of limited visibility in its forward order book.

Shares in electrical components maker Chloride shot forward as it unveiled record order books alongside a 44% hike in interim profits.

IT services company Xploite also now anticipates pre-tax profit to be substantially ahead of expectations, thanks to two recent Storage Resource Analysis (SRA) license agreements and strong trading by its Anix unit.

Drug inhaler firm Consort Medical said it is currently performing well and is anticipated to deliver results in line with market expectations.