Ascent Resources Share News (AST)

LONDON (Alliance News) - The following stocks are the leading risers and fallers within the main London indices midday Wednesday.

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FTSE 100 - WINNERS

RSA Insurance Group, up 3.5%. The troubled insurer said late Tuesday that it had appointed former Royal Bank of Scotland PLC boss Stephen Hester as its new chief executive, as it seeks to recover after discovering a GBP200 million accounting black hole in its Irish business. At RBS, Hester led the 81% UK state-owned bank back from a damaged balance sheet and disastrous acquisition of Dutch bank ABN Amro that had forced it into a taxpayer bailout. Following the new appointment, Barclays have upgraded RSA to Equalweight from Underweight, saying that with Hester on board the risk/reward ratio has improved.

ARM Holdings, up 3.3%. ARM was the stand out loser on Tuesday, closing down 7.4%, following the announcement that it is seeing slowing growth in royalty revenues from its processors used in smart phones, due to a slowing of the smart phone market in general. ARM has received a number of ratings and price target upgrades following the drop. Numis Securities raised the group to Hold from Reduce, pointing out that the stock has underperformed the FTSE 350 by 20% since its May 2013 peak and that expectations of royalty earnings are now more rational.

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FTSE 100 - LOSERS

Hargreaves Lansdown, down 6.4%. The brokerages shares have plummeted in early trading after Chief Executive Ian Gorham warned that if interest rates stay at historic lows, profits will continue to be hurt. The company reported some growth but "appears to have come shy of consensus estimates by around 4%", said Shore Capital analyst Owen Jones. Moreover, the group is likely to face increased competition going forward as a result of the Retail Distribution Review and new entrants to the market.

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FTSE 250 - WINNERS

Ashmore Group, up 4.4%. The specialist emerging market investment manager has seen its share price fall more than 20% since the middle of January, when concern over an emerging market growth slowdown began to drag equity markets lower worldwide. Following the heavy falls, Canaccord Genuity has Wednesday upgraded to stock to Buy from Hold, with a price target of 400p, suggesting the stock can recover all of its recent losses and more. Canaccord thinks Ashmore will "weather the EM storm better than others" due to its larger proportion of institutional investors and sovereign funds, as opposed to retail clients.

Balfour Beatty, up 3.9%. The infrastructure services business has been upgraded by Royal Bank of Canada Wednesday. The bank's rating of Balfour Beatty jumped two steps to Outperform from Underperform. RBC pointed to improving UK PMI's and other data points that are likely to lead to increased contracts and earnings for Balfour Beatty, according to an analyst with a different bank who has see the note. The company's net debt position is also improving, and cash is usually the key to the infrastructure companies, says the analyst.

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FTSE 250 - LOSERS

Lancashire Holdings, down 1.6%. The insurance group received an downgrade from Nomura Wednesday to Reduce from Neutral. The broker also lowered its price target to 695 pence from 848 pence, suggesting a 7% negative share price move from Tuesday's close.

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AIM - WINNERS

Aeorema Communications, up 17%. The events and communications company posted a pretax profit of GBP225,941 in the half-year ended December 31 2013, almost doubled from GBP114.460 from the previous year. Revenue rose to GBP1.8 million from GBP1.7 million in the previous year.

Serabi Gold, up 4.6%. The gold miner said its Sao Chico gold project had intersected further high-grade gold deposits, suggesting a significant extension of the mineralisation at the site. Serabi will now undertake some initial development of the deposit and is acquiring essential fleet so it can start the earthworks and ramp portal development at Sao Chico.

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AIM - LOSERS

Ascent Resources, down 17%. The independent oil and gas exploration production company Wednesday announced that it has entered into a convertible loan note agreement for up to GBP5 million in funds. The company said the first GBP2 million of the loan notes will be drawn down in the next few days and used to fund existing project commitments in Slovenia.

West African Minerals, down 15%. The iron ore mining and exploration company said it has raised about GBP3.7 million in a placing of 52.8 million shares at 7 pence each, and will use the money to fund the development of its Binga license zone in Sierra Leone.

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By Jon Darby; jondarby@alliancenews.com; @jondarby100

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