London pre-open: Looking for direction

18th Feb 2011 07:38

London is set to make an indecisive start to the final trading day of the week with City traders predicting the top share index will open a couple of points lower.Miner Anglo American doubled profits in 2010 and is merging its UK cement, aggregates and ready-mixed concrete business with French giant Lafarge. Underlying earnings leapt to $4.98bn from $2.57bn in 2009 on revenue up 34% to $32.93bn. Profit before tax was up 171% to $10.93bn and underlying earnings per share of $4.13 was better than expected.Rentokil missed forecasts in 2010 as the cold weather in December added to the woes of its parcels delivery business City Link. Pre-tax profits tumbled from £60m to £15.3m after huge write-offs of £150.5m. The firm swung from profits of £26.8m to a loss of £55.7m in the last three months of year if all of the one-off charges of £110m are included. More people are leaving their cars at home and taking the bus, according to Keith Ludeman, the chief executive of public transport group Go-Ahead. "Whilst rail remains difficult to predict, we now expect our full year operating profit across our rail and bus businesses to be higher than we previously anticipated and around the same as achieved last year (FY'10: £101.0m)." Ludeman said.