London open: Blue chips mark time again

29th Mar 2011 08:52

London is marking time this morning with investors keeping a wary eye on events in Japan and Libya.BP is also under pressure after major shareholder Standard Life told it to walk away from its troubled deal with Russian state oil company Rosneft. BP wants to push ahead with the share-swap that would it buy a 9.5% stake in Rosneft, taking its holding to 11%, while the Russian group would take 5% of the UK oil giant.David Cumming, Standard Life's UK equities head, said in an interview "At the moment we don't think BP has got a Plan B so unless there is some clear commercial benefit to BP shareholders for doing this deal...we're not supportive at the moment," he told the BBC.Hedge fund giant Man again needed the help of recent acquisition GLG as market uncertainty following the earthquake in Japan took its toll on its core AHL fund. Funds under management over the past three months edged up to $69bn from $68.6bn at December, though AHL's performance "turned sharply down with markets after the Japanese earthquake but has since partially recovered". A positive performance at GLG also counterbalanced a negative period for AHL, Man said. Travel company Thomas Cook has kept its estimate of disruption from the uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia to £20m and says, overall, the business is performing well. Bookings, capacity and booked load factors across all markets are lower than previously reported for winter season holidays though, mainly due to cancellations following the unrest in North Africa. But summer holiday bookings are ahead of last year in many areas.Defence firm Cobham has won a contract worth more than £18m to provide chaff and flare defensive aids systems for the Eurofighter Typhoon fighter jet Tranche 3A programme. Africa-focused oil and gas firm Afren notched up its first full year of post-tax profit in 2010. Though revenue eased to $319.4m in 2010 from $335.8m in 2009, profit before tax surged ahead to $78.8m from $0.5m the year before.CPP Group has collapsed after yesterday's announcement that the FSA has raised sales-related issues with its identity protection products and this will reduce its profit in 2011. The identity theft and credit card insurer said that the FSA is concerned about sales calls with customers. CPP has decided to suspend all new sales of identity protection via its own sales force. Young fashion retailer SuperGroup confirmed that its chief operating officer Diane Savory has decided to step down from the board and to leave the company for personal reasons. Savory will leave 6 May 2011 once the handover of her responsibilities to others in the group is completed.Shares of outsourced services provider Mouchel plunged 29% after it rejected takeover offers from Interserve and Costain and as it posted a 73% drop in half year underlying profit. Mouchel said the offers, "significantly undervalue the business and that Costain's proposal has an unacceptably high level of execution risk to warrant further discussions." Exillon Energy, the oil company with assets at Timan-Pechora (TP) in Northern Russia and West Siberia (WS) has raised £93.8m ($150m) from a share placing. It sold 23.44m new shares at 400p each, giving it $42m to fund infrastructure projects in WS like oil processing facilities, infield pipelines, equipment for gas utilisation and power generation.