London pre-open: Egypt casts a shadow

31st Jan 2011 07:38

Asian markets overnight were rattled by the week-end's scenes of civil unrest in Egypt, and the sense of unease has filtered through to London, where stocks are set to open lower. City traders expect the blue-chip index to open around 25 points lower.Brewer and pub owner Greene King saw healthy trading over the past eight weeks despite the poor weather with all of its divisions in-line or improving from the half-year. The snow hit trade ahead of Christmas, but since then it has been better than last year. The managed pub business saw like-for-like sales rise by 3.9% overall in the 38 weeks to 23 January. In the tenanted business, earnings per pub rose by 0.6, with an average increase of 1.9%.Oil group BG Group has signed up engineering and project management group AMEC to provide services for all of its facilities in the central North Sea. The three year contract, worth £140m, is to provide engineering, procurement, construction, commissioning and project management services.Following the completion of contract negotiations Rexam forecast that overall operating profit in the Beverage Can North America division in 2011 is expected to remain comparable to that in 2010, as improved pricing, new customers, continued growth in specialty cans and further cost control initiatives will offset the impact of lower net 12 ounce volumes.Carillion has won contracts worth around £350m this year and the contractor and support services firm has reached agreement with the UK government about how best to help it save money.Carillion believes that the opportunities to work with both central and local government to deliver greater efficiencies through outsourcing services remain very strong," said the group, which reassures there'll be no material effect on Carillion's current market guidance.Despite battling rising polymer prices, plastic packaging firm RPC saw an improvement in underlying operating profit in the final three months of 2010.