London afternoon: Main index little moved

10th Sep 2010 14:39

We're little changed from last night's close as Wall Street opens, with a largely bright financials sector offset by mostly weaker commodity plays.Most banks have done well - Barclays excluded - on hopes that new banking rules announced this weekend will be favourable. Regulators are meeting this weekend to thrash out rules on banks' capital. Royal Bank of Scotland leads the sector on hopes that the rules will be easier than feared. A broker note from UBS suggesting Lloyds has more money than it knows what to do with has also helped the mood.Interdealer broker ICAP leads the top 100. It's joined by insurers Aviva, Admiral and Legal & General.With metals prices falling back, big mining companies such as Rio Tinto and Kazakhmys are in the red. JD Wetherspoon is lacking a bit of fizz. The budget pub group took another swipe at government taxes on the pub industry as it revealed like for like sales grew by just 0.1% in the year ended 25 July, although profit was up over 7%. Total sales, up 4.3% to a record £996.3m, were helped by new pubs, but growth was down on last year's 5.2%. In the six weeks to 5 September, like-for-like sales have increased by 1.5% and total sales by 7.6%.SThree joined the growing band of recruiters reporting growing markets, though the Benelux region has yet to move back into growth mode. Group gross profit was 15% higher on a constant currency basis than the third quarter of last year at £43.0m and up 13% on the preceding quarter.Hochschild Mining has received an encouraging scoping study and an upgrade of reserves for the Inmaculada gold-silver project in southern Peru. This new resource estimate represents a 245% increase in gold ounces and 225% increase in silver ounces. Morgan Sindall, the construction group, has snapped up most of the contracts and assets of the social housing division of beleaguered building group Connaught for £28m.Russia-focused gold miner Petropavlovsk is to float its non-precious metals division on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.Elsewhere in mining, shares in Herencia Resources soared after it reported higher copper and silver grades at its Paguanta Project in northern Chile.