UK equities recover from tense week as US technology stocks fail to inspire

London: In the London equities markets, the FTSE 100 closed the week at 5,241.8, up 0.4 percent for the day and 0.2 percent for the week.

The FTSE 250 ended the day Friday at 7,495.8, also up 0.4 percent for the day and 0.3 percent on the week. It was a week of some confusion as Royal Dutch Shell began trading as a single entity but still has two share quotes on the London Stock Exchange.

Shares from the Dutch portion of the company are now listed as “A” shares, and shares from the UK portion of the business, Shell Transport & Trading, are now known as “B” shares.

The “A” shares were down 0.3 percent on Friday to close at £17.48 and “B” shares fell 0.2 percent to £17.95.0.2 per cent to £17.95.

Offshore Hydrocarbon Mapping lost a huge 32.7 percent on a Patent Office ruling against it and in favor of Statoil over data collection and analysis in the detection of offshore oil and gas reserves. Shares in OHM closed at 144p.

Among a number of rumors on takeovers, plasterboard manufacturer BPB gained 6.9 percent to 693 ½p on top of a 26.5 percent gain on Thursday as French company Saint-Gobain announced that it has approached BPB with the goal of acquiring the company.

Analysts said that a number of factors will affect the outcome of the bid, including how much of a dilution in the value of shares BPB’s shareholders will accept and how attractive shareholders consider the offer to be.

Europe: The FTSE Eurofirst 300 gained just less than 0.1 percent to close at 1,164.53 on Friday to end a week that saw more attacks on London’s transport system and the revaluation, albeit slight, of China’s currency.

In reporting its second quarter results on Thursday, Finnish telecommunications company Nokia said that its market share had increased from 32 percent to 33 percent, but that profit margins had shrunk due to the higher cost of manufacturing and lower average selling prices.

Following a series of downgrades, including a change to “underweight” by JPMorgan and a cut in target price from €17 to €16 by UBS, the value of Nokia’s shares lost 12.7 percent on the week to €12.90, to be the index’s largest decliner for the week.

On the other hand, Swedish company Ericsson reported strong results, but managed to gain only 0.6 percent for the week to close at SKr26.60 on Friday.

French food group Danone remained one of the weeks best performers on the strength of speculation that US company PepsiCo was ready to make a bid for the company, even though by the end of the week Danone’s chief executive had said he would oppose the bid.

Despite this negative news, Danone kept much of the 16 percent gain it had achieved at the beginning of the week to close at €3.42 on Friday, a gain of 10.7 for the week.

New York: In the New York equities markets on Friday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the Nasdaq composite, and the S&P 500 all ended the day and the week in positive territory, although only just in some cases.

The Dow was up 0.2 percent on the day to 10,651.26, with a fractional gain for the week, while the S&P gained 0.2 percent to 1,233.68 on the day and an 0.5 percent rise for the week and the Nasdaq added 0.1 percent to 2,179.74 for the day and a 1.1 percent gain for the week.

Many technology stocks couldn’t seem to find gains despite positive earnings reports.

Google exceeded earnings expectations but missed on its margins forecasts to lose 3.7 percent, $11.54 of their value, to sit at $302.40 at the end of the week even though Prudential had set $400 as its share price target. Despite the loss on Friday, however, Google was up slightly for the week.

Microsoft also reported that strong sales had led to better earnings than had been expected, but lost 2.90 percent to $25.68 on the day on the disappointment of some that projections weren’t higher.

Share values in Microsoft were also down slightly for the week. EBay bucked the trend after positive earnings reports even though it was down on Friday by 2.6 percent to $41.02.

EBay’s gain for the week was 17 percent. Conversely, although Yahoo gained 1.8 percent to $33.53 on Friday, its shares lost 8.3 percent for the week.

Airline stocks did well early in the week but lost ground late due to the new terrorist attacks in London, with the Amex airline index up slightly for the week but down from Wednesday through Friday by 4.8 percent.

The Chinese revaluation of its currency also had an impact when Wal-Mart shares lost 1.5 percent for the week to $49.54 as investors worried that if revaluation continues, the retailer’s costs for goods from China would go up.

Meanwhile, Halliburton gained 9.4 percent on Friday to $53.29 and was up 13 percent on the week after reporting good profits due to new military and energy contracts.

Tokyo: In Tokyo on Friday, equities markets saw declines as the yen appreciated sharply in relation to the US dollar in consequence of the revaluation of China’s currency on Thursday.

Share prices were especially hard hit among export-dependent companies.

The Nikkei 225 fell 0.8 percent to 11,695.05 and the Topix lost 0.7 percent to close at 1,186.76. The automobile manufacturing sector was hard-hit, as Toyota lost 0.9 percent to ¥4,190 and Nissan was down 1.5 percent to ¥1,145.

Additionally Sony, one of Japan’s largest exporters, lost 1.5 percent to ¥3,840. Another factor in Sony’s decline is worry over game development for the PlayStation 3.

The troubles within export companies did nothing to help companies oriented toward the domestic market, as the retail sector declined by 0.9 percent on the day and the banking and services sectors each lost 0.5 percent.

One drag on the retail sector was supermarket chain Seiyu, which had announced earlier that it will have a net loss this year. Seiyu lost 4.3 percent to ¥202 on Friday.

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