London afternoon: Footsie has rare down day

4th Aug 2009 15:02

Footsie is having a poor day with financial and miners weak and a flat start to trading on Wall Street. Insurer Legal & General set the downbeat tone by slashing its interim dividend by 45% after posting a loss of £1bn on a European embedded value (EEV) basis. The half-year dividend has been cut to 1.11p a share from 2.01p a year ago. The shares are down more than 8%. Aviva is also weak. Asia-focused bank Standard Chartered is also down after saying it is to raise £1bn through a placing. It posted solid first half figures with profits up by 10% despite a more than doubled bad debt charge. Interim profits to end June rose to $2.84bn, from $2.59bn, on operating income up 14% to $7.96bn.Investors are also mulling results from Northern Rock, where a more than tripled bad debt charge pushed losses up sharply at the nationalised bank in the past six months.RBS is slightly higher on confirmation it is to sell its banking operations in six Asian countries to Australia's ANZ Group for $418m. It will sell its retail and commercial banking operations in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore and Indonesia. Sharply lower metals prices resulted in a steep drop in sales and earnings at the diversified miner Xstrata in the first half. Operating profit in the six months to June 30 fell to $1.67bn from $4.50bn over the same period the previous year as revenue slid to $9.87bn from $16.09bn. Xstrata said continuing strong coal prices helped to mitigate the impact of lower metals prices. ENRC and Anglo American are weak spots in sympathy. Bookmaker William Hill has slumped on a warning it has had a tough July and its core retail betting arm won't meet forecasts this year. It also confirmed it is to shift its online betting and gaming business, William Hill Online, from the UK to Gibraltar. Rival Ladbrokes is also down.Tullow Oil has made its tenth discovery in the Victoria Nile Delta play after striking oil at the Ngara-1 exploration well in Uganda. It encountered over 8 metres of net oil pay in a 17 metre gross reservoir interval after drilling a total depth of 741 metres. Engineers Cookson and GKN are both up on hopes there is recovery on the way in their respective markets.Weir Group's chairman Lord Smith of Kelvin hailed the pump and valve maker's strategy to focus on sectors that are not vulnerable to discretionary spending cuts as it posted a rise in profits and revenues and lifted its dividend.Brewer and pub group Marston's is continuing to see the improvement in trading that began in April in spite of recent unseasonal summer weather.