News

Nanette Real Estate edged ahead Wednesday after the firm announced the consolidation of its Polish operations with regional partner Lehman Brothers into one vehicle, Robyg SA.

Once the process is completed Nanette said it will hold a 48.19% stake in Robyg.

In addition, the company has secured €60m of debt finance for two real estate projects in Poland.

"Given the current credit crunch, we are particularly pleased that we were able to follow our stated strategy of obtaining capital to both finance the construction and refinance the land acquisitions," said the group.

Shares in Petrel Resources rallied on news that the Iraqi government has approved the extension of its technical cooperation agreement with the oil explorer for another year.

The group expects to embark on a new oil and gas field study as part of this programme.

"We remain entirely committed to our Southern Iraq development strategy and to working with the Iraqi Oil Ministry to help monetise the potentially vast resources available to risk aware investors," said managing director David Horgan.

There were also gains for AIM listed Shieldtech after the security products group said it has won a deal to supply an innovative modular body armour system to a major overseas defence client.

The contract has an initial value of £1.8m for goods for immediate delivery with potential further sales, including upgrades, totalling £3.2m over three years.

Book publisher Quarto said it was delighted to report improved results despite the weak economy and weak dollar.

The group's principal trading currency is the US dollar but it reports results in sterling but despite that it saw pre-tax profits rise 45% to £6.7m on revenues that rose 7% to £93.6m. Total dividend was raised 6% to 7.15p each.

"The publishing segment, by its nature, sells from inventory and does not have such forward visibility, but, even allowing for the lingering problems in the US housing and associated markets, we expect a solid performance for the group in 2008," said the group.
Gene therapy outfit Oxford BioMedica is at a fresh three-month high after the independent Data Safety Monitoring Board (DSMB) recommended that the phase III TRIST study of TroVax in renal cancer continue without modification.

The continuation of the trial following the interim analysis triggers a milestone payment from Sanofi-Aventis to Oxford BioMedica of €10m.

Media Corp has now completed the re-organisation and restructuring of the group that began after the US internet gambling ban at the end of 2006.

Now divided into Internet Publishing and Advertising sales divisions, the firm has approved a business plan to invest up to £1m of its existing cash resources on expansion during 2008.

Energy and water conservation IT services provider Qonnectis also added ground on news it has signed a memorandum of understanding to enter into a distribution agreement for its new Leakfrog product with Halma Water Management.

The definitive distribution deal will enable Qonnectis and HWM to jointly market the Leakfrog domestic leakage monitor throughout the UK and internationally.