News

London's early rally has fizzled out after poor figures from merger partners HBOS and Lloyds TSB.

HBOS has upped its impariment and write-off charges to £5.2bn this year after a tough three months since June. Lloyds TSB meanwhile 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.

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.