London open: Miners lift Footsie again

20th Nov 2009 08:51

After yesterday's shake-out, London's leading shares have started on a bright note.Miners are leading the way. They are essentially proxies for movements in the dollar at present. The US currency falls, miners go up and vice versa. The miners are up today as the dollar has dropped back from yesterday's rally. Lonmin, Randgold and Antofagasta are the best performers.Cable & Wireless is also doing well on its telephony tie-up with Tesco. It will supply Tesco with wholesale broadband services while Tesco intends to double the number of in-store phone shops to 200 by the end of next year, and ultimately sees the number of units rising to 500. Product quality and safety tester Intertek is lower on talks to buy the business assurance division of Det Norske Veritas (DNV) with a large chunk of its own shares.Travel groups TUI and Thomas Cook are the worst blue chip performers, though property groups British Land and Hammerson are not far behind.Valve actuator and gearbox maker Rotork expects this year's profits will be at the upper end of market forecasts. Although order intake in the third quarter was down 3.4% on the levels seen a year ago, some of the markets in which the company operates are showing signs of a rise in activity.Fund manager Gartmore has confirmed its intention to float in London with an offer expected to be completed by mid-December. The fund manager reported that business had been good in the third quarter with £924m of net inflows, which helped push funds under management up to £21.8bn as at 30 September, up 17% since year-end 2008 and 34% since February 2009.London-based pub group Fuller's lifted underlying first half profits by 18% as it shrugged off the recession, though it is more cautious going forward.Weapons group Chemring has raised $280m through the issue of loan notes placed with a number of institutional investors. The blended interest rate on the issue is in the region of 5.5%, which, the group noted, is a rate more favourable than its current lending facilities.Trading remains subdued at wireless specialist Anite with first half underlying operating profits expected to slide to £3.5m from £12.4m this time last year.