London afternoon: Footsie climbs into blue

5th Nov 2009 14:13

A smaller than expected increase to the Bank of England's quantitative easing (QE) programme and stronger US futures have hauled London into the blue.The central bank voted to pump an additional £25bn into the economy, taking QE to £200bn. It also kept interest rates at 0.5%."The fact that the MPC decided to limit the increase in quantitative easing to £25bn and to enact it at a slower rate over the next three months suggests that they believe that the economy is on a modest recovery track," said Howard Archer, chief UK economist at IHS Global Insight.Wall Street is due a decent start as investors analyse a fresh batch of results and slightly better than expected jobs data.Over here, BT and Vodafone are among the best performers along with pest control giant Rentokil, which publishes an update tomorrow.Hedge fund manager Man said funds under management at 30 September 2009 stood at $44bn, up from $43.3bn at the end of June. Profit before tax of $302m was 8% above the estimate made at the time of the company's pre-close statement.Broadcaster ITV is set to end an 18-month decline in advertising revenue by reporting a 4% increase in December. It predicts national advertising revenue (NAR) will be flat over the last three months of the year.Stocks have spent much of the day in the red. Telecoms group Cable & Wireless dropped after it revived plans to split itself in to two parts. That news accompanied interim results that were much in line with market expectations, although full-year earnings guidance for C&W International was lowered, due to weaker trading conditions in the Caribbean. Engineering company Invensys is also down heavily. The group is still confident of posting a year on year improvement in results over the full year despite being behind at the halfway stage.India-focused miner Vedanta ramped up production in the first half, although the contribution from higher volumes was more than offset by weaker metal prices. Vedanta is lower, as are fellow miners Lonmin, Xstrata, Anglo American, Kazakhmys, BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto. Food and household goods giant Unilever saw third quarter pre-tax profits drop by 43%, but volume growth of 3.6% came in better than expected. Pre-tax profits dropped to €1.42bn in the three month ended September compared with €2.50bn last year. Turnover was down 2% at €10.20bn.Non-life insurer RSA reported a 4% rise in net written premiums and said that while economic conditions remain challenging, it is now seeing some 'encouraging signs'. Net written premiums for the nine months to 30 September were £5,028m, an increase of 4% over the same period in 2008, but down 1% at constant exchange rates.South African insurer Old Mutual's third quarter has been much better than the first half of 2009, and the trend has continued into the fourth quarter thanks to the pick-up in the investment market.Energy supplier Centrica has entered into a further agreement with power station operator Drax Group which will provide Centrica with access to an additional 300 megawatts of baseload power. The agreement will run for five years.Segro said the level of new enquiries for space has continued to trend downwards during the third quarter, though the property group added that some early signs of recovery have emerged over the last few weeks.Stockbroker Charles Stanley posted a 6.8% increase in half year pre-tax profit, adding 2010 will be an uncertain year for the economy.Investment company Alliance Trust has named Legal & General man Alan Trotter as its new finance director.