Round-up: Yule Catto, Brit Insurance, Morgan Sindall...

6th May 2010 15:01

Chemicals group Yule Catto has made a good start to the year with first quarter profit comfortably ahead of last year. In the core polymer chemicals, volumes were over 10% up on prior year, strongly ahead of the weak first quarter of 2009.Looking forward, Yule expects to see continuing strong demand in Asia and modest volume improvement in Europe. Monomer prices have continued to rise during the second quarter and work is in hand to recover these increases. Pharma, after the slow start, is likely to trade a little below last year, while William Blythe will be ahead. Overall trading is in line with the Board's previous expectations for the full year.Bid target Arriva reports revenue growth in its UK Trains division has continued to recover. CrossCountry passenger revenue was up by 8.9% in the 15 weeks to 25 April. Passenger revenue in Arriva Trains Wales was up 10.8% for the same period. UK Bus revenue increased 2.7% in the period to 16 April. Revenue in our Mainland Europe division, expressed in euro, declined by 5.3% Arriva recently agreed a £1.59bn offer from Deutsche Bahn.Shipping services group James Fisher reports trading in 2010 so far is in line with its expectations with the trading pattern broadly similar to the second half of 2009. Specialist Technical division has continued to trade strongly. Marine Oil saw higher volumes carried in the first three months but there has been no improvement so far in the spot market rates for its clean petroleum product tankers.Contractor Morgan Sindall has made a positive start to the year and is trading in line with our expectations. The forward order book has increased from £3.2bn to £3.6bn, while Urban Regeneration's development pipeline remains at £1.4bn.Underwriter Brit Insurance's gross written premium dropped 13.3% to £483.5m in the three months to March. "The diversity within the underwriting portfolio stands us in good stead as the various markets we operate in follow different cyclical patterns. We are ready to capitalise on opportunities should they arise, but we continue to expect that, absent significant rate increases, there will be no premium volume growth during 2010," chief executive Dane Douetil added.