London open: Flat start to anniversary day

15th Sep 2009 08:48

London has made a quiet start as the anniversary of the collapse of Lehman Brothers sparks widespread reflection on what happened, is the crisis over? and what can be done to stop it occuring again. Trading so far is quiet with little significant company news to switch the attention away from the bank crisis talk. BG has announced another oil discovery offshore Brazil just days after it revealed a huge find in the Santos Basin. The latest, Abare West, is also in the Santos Basin - in the pre-salt BM-S-9 concession area - approximately 290km off the coast of Sao Paulo State. BG owns 30% of the prospect alongside Petrobas (45% and operator) and Repsol 25%. Department store chain Debenhams reported a 3.8% drop in second half like-for-like sales, but expects pre-tax profits for the full-year to be ahead of last year and in line with expectations.Specialist homewares retailer Dunelm's is going great guns after full-year profit was bang in line with forecasts. Pre-tax profit for the 53 weeks to 4 July jumped 9% to £53.5m and by 6.8% on a 52-week basis. Like for like sales were down just 0.5% versus the 5.6% decline in H1. LfL sales for the first 10 weeks of the financial year jumped 16.1%.Reports in today's FT suggest RSA, the general insurance group, is looking at large acquisitions - potentially worth about £600m ($994m) - that might need to be supported with a rights issue, it has told investors and analysts.ITV could face changes to the terms of its business with advertisers after the Competition Commission indicated it was willing to alter the terms of the broadcaster's Contract Rights Renewal (CRR) Undertakings, though it does not advocate their scrapping altogether. Anite warned that profit in the first half is expected to be significantly lower than the record profits that were reported in the prior year. The software group said the current trading year has been challenging, with less favourable currency movementsand seasonality than last year.Hot on the heels of a deal to provide the UK retail arm of Russian energy company Gazprom with smart metering services, Bglobal has signed a deal with Superdrug, the UK's second-largest beauty and health retailer, to install smart meters at all of its UK stores, totalling over 900 sites.On the economic front, the monthly survey from the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) said that more agents had reported a rise, rather than a fall in values, in August. The net balance was +11% last month versus minus 6% in July. That's the highest proportion since May 2007.