London afternoon: Footsie flat

Footsie dropped into the red over the lunchtime session before crawling back into positive territory. Little seems capable of getting investors excited, with even the highly volatile BP having a relatively quiet day.Part-nationalised lender Royal Bank of Scotland is the best performing blue chip. It has sold another piece of its sprawling empire, getting shot of a Pakistani subsidiary at the second attempt. It has reached agreement for the sale of its 99.37% holding in RBS Pakistan to Faysal Bank Limited for €41m, or about 2.5 rupees per share, a substantial discount to last night's closing price in Karachi.Sainsbury's is slightly higher. The supermarket has outdone arch rival Tesco in the growth stakes with a 4.6% increase in like for like sales during the first quarter and is apparently doing a buzzing trade in Vuvuzela horns. "We have made a good start to the financial year in line with our expectations," said boss Justin King.BP has turned lower after a bright start. Last night's address from the Oval Office by President Obama has piled more pressure on the company. Obama demanded that the oil giant hand over control of compensation payments for the Gulf Coast oil spill. Official estimates now put the amount of oil leaking into the Gulf at 60,000 barrels a day compared with initial estimates from BP of just 5,000.The Times also reports the Brazilian Government raised doubts over BP's $7bn deal to buy deepwater assets in Brazil.Cairn Energy has also given up early gains. The shares initially rose after the company received formal approval from the Government of Greenland to start drilling the first two wells of a planned four well exploration programme in the Disko West area, offshore Western Greenland. Utility companies Severn Trent and United Utilities are both trading in ex-dividend form today. The latter said Charlie Cornish, the managing director of its Utility Solutions division, is leaving the board after more than six years to run Manchester Airport for a rumoured £500,000-a-year. Citigroup's opinion appeared to move the price of two blue-chip shares today. Aggreko is on the up after Citi upgraded it to "buy" from "hold" but fund manager Schroders is in retreat following Citi's downgrade of the stock to "sell" from "buy".Satellite operator Inmarsat, meanwhile, is still suffering from a Bank of America Merrill Lynch downgrade announced yesterday. The broker has cut its rating on the shares from "neutral" to "underperform", saying the company will have to spend piles of cash to replace its older satellites.In the FTSE 250, speciality plastic and fibre products provider Filtrona is up 15% after saying it continues to trade ahead of expectations Having cheered its shareholders back in April with news of strong trading the group said that the outperformance has continued for the nine week period to 5 June.Elsewhere, the environment for government and public sector contracts has worsened markedly under the new coalition government, consultant and civil engineer contractor Mouchel warned, with its order pipeline falling since March. Agricultural products supplier Wynnstay served up a 12% increase in half year profit and said it remained 'very positive about growth prospects, short and long term.'Intelek shares shot ahead as the electronics group agreed a cash takeover from US firm Teledyne at more than double yesterday's closing share price. The offer price of 32p per Intelek share represents a premium of approximately of 106% to the last market price. It values the?the company in total at £28m.Brazil-focused gold miner Serabi Mining has agreed to issue 120m shares at 3p each to Eldorado Gold Corporation, which produces the precious metal in Turkey, China, Brazil and Greece. Following the subscription, Eldorado will hold 26.8% of Serabi's share capital.Wireless solutions provider Cyan has received an initial order for 10,000 wireless electricity meter monitors from a global major manufacturer. The units are intended for the Indian market. The order represents one of the smallest of several tenders that Cyan understands are currently open in the Indian market. Cyan products are being quoted into further tenders from both this and other end customers.