London open: Bright start fizzles out

11th Oct 2010 08:46

Early gains for Footsie have quickly fizzled out and the index is almost back where it started.Builders merchant and Wickes' owner Travis Perkins is on track as sales improved again in the third quarter. Turnover for the nine months to end of September rose 6%, driven by the merchants businesses and a modest improvement at Wickes, which grew sales for period to 2 October by 2.1%, though like-for-like turnover eased 0.1%.Wood Group is still trading in line with forecasts and the provider of support services to the oil and gas industry expects to match full-year estimates. The Aberdeen-based firm, which today won a $152m contract to convert California's Tracy Peaker power plant to a combined cycle facility, said higher bidding volumes and recent contract awards at its engineering business should help improve numbers in the second half and into 2011. Drugs companies AstraZeneca and Pozen said their jointly developed pain reliever Vimovo has received positive agreement for approval across 23 EU countries. Vimovo treats osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, and ankylosing spondylitis.Ladbrokes, the bookmaking firm, said group net revenue was up 12% year on year in the third quarter. Operating profits (excluding high rollers) were 128% higher, albeit against weak comparative figures.No-frills airline easyJet has agreed a settlement to its acrimonious dispute with founder Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou over its continued use of the 'easy' name. The price is not cheap. For the next 50 years, easyJet will have to pay a royalty of 0.25% of revenues, fixed at £3.9m and £4.95m in the first and second years respectively.Electronic component maker e2v saw a strong order flow over the past six months and as a result trading this year will be better than expected. Industrial disruption in the latter part of 2009/10 meant e2v delivered an unusually high level of overdue orders in the six months to September. Bluetooth chip specialist CSR "will defend itself" against Broadcom which filed an enforcement action on Friday against redesigned products made by the UK firm's SiRF unit. In the latest episode of a long-running patent infringement case, the American firm alleges violation of the US International Trade Commission's (ITC) orders despite a previous ruling by US customs that the "redesigned chips fall outside the scope of the exclusion order issued by the ITC".