London open: Flat start for Footsie

10th Sep 2010 08:51

London has opened flat with little sign of that changing after a lacklustre first hour. US shares tailed off towards the end of day on Wall Street and that has had some impact.Banks are still going well ahead of the new capital rules to be unveiled by BIS on Monday. Royal Bank of Scotland leads the sector on hopes that the rules will be easier than feared. A broker note suggesting Lloyds has more money than it knows what to do with has also helped the mood. JD Wetherspoon 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.