London open: BP rally lifts Footsie

Date: Friday 04 Jun 2010

London's blue chips are making progress again with BP recovering further on more optimistic reports from the Gulf of Mexico on its attempts to curb the oil spillage.

The firm says it has placed a LMRP cap on the leak, but added that it is too early to say if the next part of the plan, to syphon the oil up to the surface, would work.

Shares in Rockhopper Exploration have increased eight-fold over the last month and were on the rise again on Friday after the North Falkland Basin oil and gas exploration company gave an update on its Sea Lion prospect.

The company said samples from well 14/10-2 on the Sea Lion prospect were confirmed as medium gravity crude oil, ranging from 26.4 to 29.2 API (American Petroleum Institute) gravity.

Budget airline easyJet flew 7.9% more passengers in May than it did the same time last year despite the impact of the volcanic ash clouds from Iceland. Almost 4.3m of us travelled with the carrier last month, up from just under 4m in May 2009, while the load factor, which measures how well the planes are filled, rose to 85.8% from 83.5%.

AstraZeneca has submitted a marketing authorisation application (MAA) to the European Union for its cardiovascular drug Axanum.

Scottish and Southern Energy (SSE) will pay almost $100m less for the North Sea natural gas and infrastructure assets of Hess it agreed to buy in April after some of Hess' existing partners exercised pre-emption rights. The UK utility had offered $423m for the assets, but will now pay $324m as it only has about 80% of the resources from the original package available to buy.

Recruitment and contract placement specialist SThree expects some improvement in all of its market in the second half of the year after a tough first six months. "The current deal pipeline indicates that the group is experiencing improvements across most markets." the firm said. Gross profit in the first half fell 19% to £74m.

On the downside, outplacement specialist and recruiter Penna warned the new government's freeze on recruitment will hit revenues hard this year and mean only a marginal first half profit.

Things are improving faster than expected at Low & Bonar, the performance materials groups focused on technical textiles, with like for like sales in the second quarter ahead of last year in all segments. The company said that the transport, leisure and carpet manufacturing markets had put in especially strong performances.

Hornby, the toy company that owns the Scalextric, Corgi and Airfix brands, said it is already seeing significant interest in its London Olympics product range from retailers and consumers. The announcement accompanied full year results in which the model train set maker’s underlying profit before tax came in bang on schedule at £5.7m, down from £6.1m the year before.