London pre-open: Flat start on cards

6th Jan 2011 07:37

London is expected to start little changed after last night's gains on Wall Street and a mixed session in Asia.Futures are currently pointing to a drop of 2 points when trading gets underway, keeping the FTSE 100 in touch with its highest levels in 2½ years. Greetings card specialist Clinton Cards has become the latest retailer to point to the negative impact of wintery weather in the run-up to Christmas, warning that pre-tax profits for the year to July 31 are likely to fall short of current market expectations. Like-for-like sales fell by 2% from the same period a year ago at its UK stores in the five weeks to 2 January. At its Irish operations (with 14 out of the group's 824 stores) like-for-like sales were down by 12.2%.Uncertainty in the retail sector has prompted McBride, which makes toothpaste and other household items for supermarkets to sell under their own labels, to warn that its full-year performance could be at the lower end of its expectations. Growth in Central and Eastern Europe has been driving revenues higher but the UK has been very competitive, McBride said. This, "combined with our previously announced time-lag in cost recovery, leads the board to expect that trading profit for the first half will be around £20m," the company said.Recruitment giant Hays grew net fees by more than a fifth during its second quarter as rapid growth at the international business made up for a drab performance in the UK. Net fees on a like for like basis - organic growth at constant currency - was up 21% in the three months to 31 December, in line with expectations. The actual increase was 24%. Continental Europe & Rest of World led the way with a 37% surge, or 53% on an actual basis, followed by Asia Pacific, up 36%, or 33% actual. The UK & Ireland rose just 1%.Construction and engineering group Costain has returned to the table with what it terms "a significantly enhanced proposal" to take over contractor Mouchel. The new offer is on the basis of 0.5947 Costain shares for each Mouchel share, valuing each Mouchel share at about 135p.There are further evidence of a newly confident airline industry Thursday as British Airways completed contracts with power systems developer Rolls-Royce for Trent 900 and Trent 1000 engines to power up to 61 new wide-body aircraft. The order was originally announced in September 2007 and is worth in excess of $5bn at list prices if all options are exercised.