London midday: Stocks rise as eyes turn to Eurozone meeting

30th Mar 2012 11:42

- Investors keep a close eye on meeting in Copenhagen- Eurozone inflation falls but still high- Miners lead the rise by lunchtimeThe Footsie was making decent gains by Friday lunchtime, snapping a three-day losing streak, as Eurozone ministers meet in Copenhagen to discuss a potential increase in the region's firewall.Speculation runs rampant as the Eurozone finance ministers throw out varying opinions on what should be done and what numbers we're actually talking about. It is widely expected that officials will allow the €200bn already committed by the temporary EFSF fund to run simultaneously with the new €500bn permanent ESM for a grand total of €700bn. However, according to a draft seen by Bloomberg, this could be increased by a further €240bn until mid-2013, bringing Europe's emergency war chest to a total of €940bn with €740bn available once the ESM comes into operation.Meanwhile, Eurozone inflation eased to an annual rate of 2.6% in March, according to Eurostat. While this was 0.1 percentage points lower than February, it came in above consensus estimates of 2.5%. "The good thing is that inflation fell in the region. The problem is that prices are resisting from falling any further in spite of the crisis because of rising oil prices," said analysts at Digital Look.Brent crude futures were up 0.58% at $123.10 a barrel on the ICE Europe just before midday as prices recovered from the 2.5% fall over the last three days on the back of rising US stockpiles. In domestic news, Gfk's consumer confidence index for the UK dropped from -29 in February to -31 in March, expectations had been for a slight improvement to -28. RESOURCE STOCKS ON THE UPMiners were performing strongly with Kazakhmys, Vedanta Resources, Antofagasta and Rio Tinto in demand recovering after the sector's recent underperformance. Despite today's 2.7% rise for the mining sector as a whole, stocks are still down an average 8% over the last month. Rio Tinto announced this morning that it has joined the China Beijing Metals Exchange (CBMX), a new electronic trading platform providing additional iron ore trading channels in the Chinese market. Engineering titan GKN was a high riser with Jefferies saying this morning that it believes Volvo Aero would be a "good fit with GKN Aerospace". "It appears the suggestion GKN might partly fund its acquisition with new equity has caused the market some anxiety. Should the big day arrive, the acquisition would probably stand on its merits, in our view," the broker said. Sector peers Weir and IMI were also making gains.Real estate investment trust British Land rose after announcing that the Gibraltar Limited Partnership, in which it has a 41% stake, agreed a new five-year £150m loan facility. Meanwhile, sweeteners giant Tate and Lyle gained after saying that trading in the final quarter of its financial year has been in line with expectations, consolidating a good performance for the year. Drugs giant AstraZeneca has had a bad run of late so news that a US District Court has ruled that the formulation patent protecting its SEROQUEL XR blockbuster drug is valid will be most welcome with shares up 0.5% Among the fallers was utilities group SSE despite reaffirming its intention to increase its full year dividend by at least a couple of percentage points above the year-on-year change in the UK RPI. The group said that its household customers electricity consumption fell by around 7% in 2011/12 while gas use dropped off by around 19%, compared with 2010/11.FTSE 250: LSE, ELECTROCOMPONENTS AND QINETIQ IN DEMAND AFTER UPDATES Miners were leading the rise on the second-tier index with Ferrexpo, Centamin and Talvivaara gaining at least 4% each.Bourses operator London Stock Exchange reported a 'continued good operational performance' in the eleven months to February 29th and said it should meet expectations of strong results for the full-year. Electrical components distributor Electrocomponents rose after saying that sales rose 7% in the year to March 31st to more than £1.2bn, with the International division setting the pace with sales growth of around 9%, compared to growth of around 3% for the UK. QinetiQ was also in demand after revealing that it is to get a one-off payment of £65m from the Ministry of Defence (MoD) after the two parties signed an agreement releasing the MoD from accumulated costs incurred in previous years. FTSE 100 - RisersKazakhmys (KAZ) 926.50p +3.81%Antofagasta (ANTO) 1,164.00p +3.74%Vedanta Resources (VED) 1,252.00p +3.47%Man Group (EMG) 134.50p +3.46%Weir Group (WEIR) 1,756.00p +3.42%Petrofac Ltd. (PFC) 1,709.00p +3.14%Rio Tinto (RIO) 3,479.00p +3.07%GKN (GKN) 208.60p +3.06%ITV (ITV) 88.25p +3.04%Xstrata (XTA) 1,095.00p +2.96%FTSE 100 - FallersVodafone Group (VOD) 171.60p -1.63%Resolution Ltd. (RSL) 261.40p -0.61%Diageo (DGE) 1,507.00p -0.56%British American Tobacco (BATS) 3,169.00p -0.46%SSE (SSE) 1,317.00p -0.38%Aberdeen Asset Management (ADN) 257.40p -0.27%Next (NXT) 2,973.00p -0.23%Serco Group (SRP) 543.00p -0.18%Centrica (CNA) 313.00p -0.13%Shire Plc (SHP) 2,116.00p -0.09%FTSE 250 - RisersFerrexpo (FXPO) 310.00p +5.26%Afren (AFR) 132.80p +4.48%Centamin (DI) (CEY) 71.30p +4.32%Fenner (FENR) 438.90p +4.25%Talvivaara Mining Company (TALV) 244.00p +3.83%Northgate (NTG) 214.50p +3.62%Spectris (SXS) 1,797.00p +3.10%Home Retail Group (HOME) 115.40p +3.04%Senior (SNR) 197.40p +2.81%International Personal Finance (IPF) 263.10p +2.77%FTSE 250 - FallersFirstGroup (FGP) 241.00p -2.59%Savills (SVS) 371.00p -2.37%Carpetright (CPR) 686.00p -2.00%SVG Capital (SVI) 283.80p -1.87%TalkTalk Telecom Group (TALK) 136.00p -1.81%Petropavlovsk (POG) 575.00p -1.71%KCOM Group (KCOM) 68.80p -1.71%Perform Group (PER) 304.90p -1.65%Edinburgh Dragon Trust (EFM) 243.70p -1.54%ITE Group (ITE) 221.30p -1.43%BC