London midday: Footsie tops 5,900

Date: Monday 20 Dec 2010

Things turned around dramatically in the hour before lunch as the session came alive after a rather dull start, nudging a 2½-year high by midday.

Defensive issues are still going well. National Grid, Scottish & Southern Energy and British Gas owner Centrica are expected to benefit from the cold snap.

But snow-affected stocks like British Airways and many of the major retailers have trimmed losses.

It also looks like Wall Street will shrug off live-fire exercises by South Korea close to its Northern neighbours, and eurozone sovereign debt issues. Futures prices currently point to a 25-point gain for the Dow Jones.

Arctic conditions are hurting retailers at their busiest and most crucial time of the year. Next, Marks & Spencer, Tesco, Dixons, Debenhams, Mothercare and Dunelm are all sharply lower, but off their worst levels.

Banks have recovered from a mixed morning. Barclays, Royal Bank of Scotland and HSBC are up, while Lloyds is down after RBS cut the target price on its rival to 105p from 120p.

Rumours that Ladbrokes is mulling a bid for internet casino firm 888 have been confirmed by the high street bookmaker.

It’s thought a price of 70p for each 888 share is being discussed, valuing the business at about £240m.

Aggreko has won a contract to be the exclusive supplier of temporary energy services at the London Olympics in 2012, the power supply and temperature control specialist has announced. The value of the contract is expected to be around £37m. It will also be the sponsor of both the Olympic and Paralympic Games.

Scottish port operator Forth Ports said it is on course to achieve targets for 2010 as momentum at its ports continues. Underlying pre-tax profit for the full year is in line with company expectations, the group said in a company update. Overall trading within the ports in Scotland and Tilbury remains in line with the group's expectations despite the recent spell of severe winter weather.

Soco International has started drilling the wildcat exploration well Bayingu-1 (BYU-1) in the Nganzi Block, onshore the Democratic Republic of Congo (Kinshasa). It’s expected to take the oil explorer, which has a 65% working interest in Nganzi through an 85%-owned subsidiary, 25 days to reach target depth of about 2,520 metres.

PZ Cussons is expanding its food and nutrition business in Nigeria despite difficult trading conditions in the west African country. The company best known in Britain as a soap-maker is establishing a food ingredients business as a joint venture with the large Asian agribusiness Wilmar International.

Cambridge based bioscience firm Abcam said trading since November has continued in line with expectations after a particularly robust performance in North America. The group, which markets antibodies via its own online catalogue said, "The business has performed well, notably in our largest geographic market, North America, whilst sales growth in the UK has been somewhat restrained owing to uncertainty caused by the recent UK Government spending review."

Apart from the sale of its Swedish business earlier this month, not much has changed at Davis Service Group since November’s interims, according to the laundry and workwear firm. Then, it reported a modest improvement in interim earnings and said it was confident of posting full year results in line with expectations.

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