London pre-open: Modest falls expected

10th Sep 2010 07:36

The late swoon by Wall Street yesterday is having its effect on sentiment this side of the pond, and City traders expect the Footsie to open around 22 points lower than last night's close.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. Measured and Indicated mineral resources are now estimated at 3.8mt at an average grade of 4.3 g/t gold and 129 g/t silver respectively, suggesting the mine contains approximately 532,000 ounces of gold and 15.8m ounces of silver or 796,000 ounces of gold equivalent.