CLG.L Share News (CLG)

Stay on the sidelines until Diageo chief executive Ivan Menezes has got a grip on his sprawling drinks empire, Danny Fortson advised in the Sunday Times. In his Inside the City column, Fortson said Menezes had inherited a business that was hard to control when he took over last July. The strong pound, a clampdown on excess by Chinese officials and a botched execution of strategy contributed to disappointing results last week. It is not a crisis. Menezes has cut costs, a new single grain Scotch for the Chinese market could meet local tastes, and destocking by customers will have to stop sometime. Clipper Logistics has done well over the last 20 years but the best could be to come, the Mail on Sunday's's Midas column said. Clipper, which floated on the stock market in May, helps retailers store and sell their goods and operates many of their on-line systems. Customers include John Lewis, Tesco and Superdry. It wants to grow by offering more services to its customers, taking on new ones and expanding overseas. It generates lots of cash and its intended dividend will yield about 4%. Buy the shares, Midas advised.Predicting HSBC's performance is a crapshoot, Danny Fortson argued in his Inside the City column. Interim results posted on 4 August will show profit down, though analysts vary widely in their predictions, the Sunday Times writer said. Like other banks, HSBC has been hit by the slowdown in fixed income trading caused by low interest rates. New mortgage rules in the UK will also have dented performance slightly. HSBC is "unwieldy" and the breadth of its operations makes predictions hard to make.SF