London is falling down, their stocks at least

The decline in the value of London’s blue chip shares--- those rock-steady investments—is anticipated in the next opening deals. This is due to the disappointing performance of Apple and American Express in the US market last night. Footsie shares is also expected to drop 30 points today, traders say.

Vodafone has earlier indicated it was expecting gross receipts to touch bottom of the considered-and-plotted GBP39.8 to GBP40.7B revenue bracket, which reflects the first quarter position, latest economic problems and below-expectations product sales. However, the second quarter to June figures show revenues rose by just below 20% (19.1%) to GBP9.8B, although company expansion was just 1.7% and even a reduction in Europe by about 0.2%. Still, learned predictions sayVodafone will perform lower than its expectations expressed last year.

Johnson Matthey displays a good and steady initial run in the new year, with revenues growing 33% from the first quarter to end of the second. Gross receipts except metals grew by 12%, thus raising the resulting profits by 22%. Seems their metals did not fare as good. Environment Technologies Division’s performance was much better than last year in sales and profits, though no definite figures were indicated such as by how much and what were the totals. Autocatalyst’s sales figures continue to rise steadily in Asia even if North American sales have dropped somewhat, but this is to be expected in the developing countries of Asia.     

Meanwhile, the sliding sales volumes of on-trade beer ---beer and ale sold in their pubs-- as well as the rising levels of aid to their licensees experiencing problems in these fluid economic conditions has lowered their earnings, says Enterprise Inns, which manage a string of pubs. Their Business Recovery Scheme, which intends to assist franchisees, has added another hefty GBP3.5M to the kitty, so to speak, this first semester, and this has grown for the second half of the year. But the company may still post a modest rise in shares by September 2008, it surmised.  

On another tack, the mortgage company Paragon announced it has been approached by entities interested in evaluating the company for possible offers, but did not specify whether the offers were for buy-out, merger or any other scheme. The company’s board has entertained the preliminary discussions and thus is providing access to company information as a matter of due diligence of the interested parties. The Financial Times says the interested party may be Blackstone.