London pre-open: Flat start predicted

30th Jun 2009 07:40

Expect London to open little changed if futures prices are anything to go by after Wall Street maintained its healthy lead through to the close last night.Wolseley chief executive Chip Hornsby has stepped down with immediate effect to let Ian Meakins take the helm at the building supplies group. Hornsby, who leaves after 27 years at the company, has led the group since August 2006. Meakins, 52, who'll take up his role on 13 July, was until recently boss of foreign exchange and payments business, Travelex Holdings, and CEO at Alliance UniChem before its merger with Boots in July 2006.BG has made a big push into the US shale gas market with the acquisition of a 50% stake in US firm Exco's fields in east Texas and north Louisiana. BG will pay $1.055bn for 120,000 acres in the two states, of which 84,000 acres cover the prolific Haynesville shale gas formation.Antofagasta has achieved financial closing and satisfaction of conditions to borrowing for $1.05bn of project financing for the Esperanza copper-gold project in Chile. The miner, which owns 70% of the project, said first disbursement is expected to take place during July. Construction started in the third quarter of 2008. Antofagasta and Marubeni Corp, which owns the other 30%, are funding the balance of the project's $2.3bn total estimated capital cost.Music, DVD and games retailer HMV said against a difficult background it delivered sales and profit growth for the year, driven by good trading in HMV UK & Ireland. Pre-tax profit rose to £61.3m from £52m on sales up 4.4% to £1.96bn. HMV UK & Ireland like for like sales were up 1.9%, but Waterstone's and HMV International's like for like sales fell 3.8% and 3.4% respectively. Carpetright slashed its final dividend as profits tumbled by 72% last year, with the carpet retailer warning its sees no upturn for at least 12 months. Pre-tax profit in the year to end April crashed to £16.7m from £59.5m on sales of £483m, down 7.4%. The UK & Ireland bore the brunt of the downturn with sales down by nearly 13% and profit down 73% to £15.6m. The final dividend is chopped from 30p to 4p making a total for the year of 8p, against 52p.Oil & gas facilities service provider Petrofac said it has had a good start to the year and is confident 2009 will be another year of strong growth. With year to date order intake across the group of $5.4bn, total backlog is expected to be approximately $8bn at 30 June 2009 (31 December 2008: $4bn).Bus and train operator Arriva said results for the six months will reflect the lower revenue growth rates in CrossCountry but otherwise expected to be broadly in line with expectations. The group said the UK Bus division continued to trade strongly, helping offset the impact of an increase in fuel costs during the first half of 2009. Revenue has increased by 5.2% in the five months to the end of May. In its UK Trains division, passenger revenue has grown in both franchises, although the rate of growth has eased. At Arriva Trains Wales, passenger revenue growth to the end of May was 8.7%, while at CrossCountry franchise it was 2.4%.