BP Share News (BP.)

(ShareCast News) - Financials were again to be found near the top of the leaderboard on Wednesday with shares of 'big oil' firms nipping at their heels.According to an opinion poll conducted for the Evening Standard by Opinium, voters in London said they were overwhelmingly in favour of the UK staying inside the European Union, by a margin of 60% in favour to 40% against. The results saw cable extend its recent gains by 0.56% to stand at 1.4716 and boosted shares in the main banking groups, those of RBS in particular.To take note of, easyJet also stood to gain in the case of the UK remaining inside the EU given the critical importance for the company of unfettered access to the rest of the Continent.Shares in BP and Royal Dutch Shell were also in favour as cruide oil futures continued to flirt with the psychological $50 a barrel price level. As of 16:12 BST front month Brent futures were up by 1.28% to $49.24 per barrel against the backdrop of data Stateside revealing a large drop in commercial oil inventories in the States.Marks & Spencer was out of fashion as the retailer reported an 18.5% drop in full-year profits. New chief executive Steve Rowe appeared to engage in some canny 'kitchen sinking', warning that the current year's profits will be hit by his plan to turnaround the clothing business. Rowe pushed through a £200m charge on non-underlying items that dragged down profits for 53 weeks to 26 March, with underlying pre-tax profits rising 4.3% to £689.6m on sales up 2.4% to £10.6bn.Calculating that Tesco's sales performance at larger stores was likely to be worse than reported and that margins should be "permanently rebased lower", Credit Suisse has cut its earnings estimates and its target price on the supermarket group. The Swiss broker slashed its target to 115p from 135p but kept its 'underperform' rating.Intertek Group was unloved despite reporting a 2.3% increase in organic sales for the first four month of the year, ahead of estimates from analysts at Shore Capital. The FTSE 100 testing, inspection and certification company´s management said its resource-related business continued to suffer from challenging markets.Taylor Wimpey was also out of favour, alongside a retreat in the likes of Persimmon and Land Securities. In the previous session, two of its directors, Pete Redfern and James Jordan, offloaded a significant amount of shares, the company said in a statement.