London open: Early gains for Footsie

Date: Wednesday 16 Jun 2010

London has made a strong start following last night’s 200-point rally on Wall Street.

In company news this morning, Sainsbury’s has outdone arch rival Tesco in the growth stakes with a 4.6% increase in like for like sales during the first quarter and is apparently doing a roaring trade in Vuvuzela horns. “We have made a good start to the financial year in line with our expectations,” said boss Justin King.
BP has made more headlines after last night’s address from the Oval Office by President Obama. He demanded that the oil giant hand over control of compensation payments for the Gulf Coast oil spill. Official estimates now put the amount of oil leaking into the Gulf at 60,000 barrels a day compared with initial estimates from BP of just 5,000.

The Times also reports the Brazilian Government raised doubts over BP's $7bn deal to buy deepwater assets in Brazil.
Cairn Energy has received formal approval from the Government of Greenland to start drilling the first two wells of a planned four well exploration programme in the Disko West area, offshore Western Greenland.

Elsewhere, the environment for government and public sector contracts has worsened markedly under the new coalition government, consultant and civil engineer contractor Mouchel warned, with its order pipeline falling since March.

Part-nationalised lender Royal Bank of Scotland has sold another piece of its sprawling empire, getting shot of a Pakistani subsidiary at the second attempt. It has reached agreement for the sale of its 99.37% holding in RBS Pakistan to Faysal Bank Limited for €41m, or about 2.5 rupees per share, a substantial discount to last night’s closing price in Karachi.

Speciality plastic and fibre products provider Filtrona continues to trade ahead of expectations. Having cheered its shareholders back in April with news of strong trading the group said that the outperformance has continued for the nine week period to 5 June.

Agricultural products supplier Wynnstay served up a 12% increase in half year profit and said it remained 'very positive about growth prospects, short and long term.'