Esure Group Share News (ESUR)

LONDON (Alliance News) - The following stocks are the leading risers and fallers within the main London indices on Wednesday.
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FTSE 100 - WINNERS
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Hikma Pharmaceuticals, up 2.8%. The drug company said it has received a letter from the US Food and Drug Administration closing out a previous warning letter it had received from the regulator. Hikma said the letter closes out the warning letter is received from the FDA in October 2014 regarding its injectables manufacturing plant in Portugal. The company said the FDA has accepted the remedial actions it took to fix the problems at the manufacturing plant, which had centred on environmental monitoring issues.

Antofagasta, up 2.5%, Anglo American, up 2.0%. The Chilean copper miner was upgraded to Neutral from Sell by Goldman Sachs, with an unchanged price target of 440.00 pence. Anglo American, meanwhile, was upgraded to Neutral from Sell by Goldman, with an unchanged 185.00p price target.
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FTSE 100 - LOSERS
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International Consolidated Airlines Group, down 2.4%, easyJet down 1.9%. The British Airways owner and the budget carrier were trading lower after two Air France flights travelling to Paris from the US were diverted due to anonymous bomb threats. The incident adds to concerns about the impact of the terrorist attacks in Paris on airlines and travel companies.

St James's Place, down 1.7%, Hargreaves Lansdown, down 1.6%. The wealth manager and fund supermarket were trading lower after the Financial Conduct Authority, the UK's financial regulator, set out the terms of a study to investigate the UK's GBP6.6 trillion asset management industry, with competition and costs to be probed by the regulator as scrutiny of the wholesale financial markets intensifies. The FCA will look at questions about the difficulty investors have in monitoring the performance of asset managers, the role of investment consultants and potential conflicts of interest arising from the provision of advice and asset management services, the ability of asset managers to control costs borne by investors, among other issues. Both retail and institutional investors will be considered under the study.
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FTSE 250 - WINNERS
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Hunting, up 4.8%, Kaz Minerals, up 2.9%. The oil services company and the Kazakhstan-focused miner were both boosted by upgrades from Goldman Sachs. Goldman added Hunting to its Conviction Buy List, albeit with a slightly trimmed price target of 546.40 pence, down from 560.10p. Hunting shares were trading at 330.00p on Wednesday. Goldman also upped its rating on Kaz to Neutral from Sell, with an unchanged 110.00p price target.
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FTSE 250 - LOSERS
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esure Group, down 2.7%. The motor and home insurer was downgraded to Hold from Buy by broker Peel Hunt.
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MAIN MARKET AND AIM - WINNERS
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Agriterra, up 24%. The Africa-focused agriculture company said its Sierra Leone-based Tropical Farms cocoa business has signed a trading agreement with an unnamed natural, organic and specialty foods company. Under the terms of the deal, Tropical Farms will use its organic certification and buying networks to source up to 500.0 million tonnes of Sierra Leone cocoa beans in the 2015-16 buying season. The unnamed offtaker will then provide Tropical Farms with pre-financing to cover the purchase of beans.
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MAIN MARKET AND AIM - LOSERS
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Soco International, down 17%. The oil and gas company firmed up its full-year production guidance on Wednesday as the group said it has been boosted by the earlier start-up of the H5 wellhead platform at the Te Giac Trang field in Vietnam. But said while the H5 platform had started ahead of schedule, it was currently producing around 9,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day, slightly below the company's expectations. Soco said its production for the ten months to the end of October was 12,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day. It has revised up its production guidance for 2015 to 11,800-12,000 boepd, up from 11,000-12,000 previously.

UK Mail Group, down 11%. The postal operator said the time it will take to resolve the problems in its Parcels business will hit its outlook for its next financial year, though it affirmed is guidance for the current year despite pretax profit for the first half plunging due to higher costs and one-offs. UK Mail said the longer-than-expected timescale for resolving the operational issues in its Parcels network and the consequential impact this will have on its earnings both in its 2016 and 2017 financial years and have forced its outlook for the year to March 2017 to be "softened slightly". Due to the concerns about the impact the restructuring will have on its 2017 results, however, the group has cut its interim dividend payout to 5.5 pence per share, down from 7.3p. It said it considers it "prudent" to rebase the dividend given the challenges it currently faces.
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By Sam Unsted; samunsted@alliancenews.com; @SamUAtAlliance

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