London afternoon: Stocks pare losses

Stocks pared losses over the lunch time session leaving the overall picture looking mixed, though the Footsie is slightly easier on balance, as investors continue to fret about the fall-out from the Japanese disaster, while sovereign debt concerns in Europe have been revived by the downgrade of Portugal's debt by ratings agency Moody's.There has been a brace of executive departures in the leisure industry with the chief executives of hotels group Intercontinental Hotels and pubs group Mitchells & Butlers settling their tabs and moving on. InterContinental Hotels' chief executive Andrew Cosslett shocked the Crowne Plaza and Holiday Inns chains owner by handing in his notice. Long-serving Cosslett will stand down on 30 June to be replaced by finance director Richard Solomons, who has been on the board since 2003. Solomons is also head of Head of Commercial Development. The shares are lower.Mitchells & Butlers said chief executive, Adam Fowle, is to leave the company by mutual consent after a period of two years in the post.Elsewhere in the pubs sector, the food offering at Marston's is defying consumers' attempts at belt tightening. The company said it has "delivered an encouraging and robust performance despite the continued economic uncertainty" in the 23 weeks to 12 March, with profitability in line with expectations.Tullow Oil has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Government of Uganda that should bring an end to the conflict over taxation and enable it to push ahead with developing its Ugandan assets. This has perked up the shares but no details of the agreement have been published. Associated British Foods is going well after being upgraded from neutral to outperform by Credit Suisse. Sausage roll fans filed into Greggs in record numbers during 2010, pushing profits up almost 8%, and like for like sales growth so far in 2011 is double what it was for all of 2010. The Newcastle-based company, which runs over 1,480 value bakers shops up and down the country, made £52.5m in the 52 weeks to 1 January, a record high and up from £48.8m in 2009.It's a case of 'chips with everything' for Imagination Technologies, which continues to see growing demand for its graphics chip technology, though its Digital Audio Broadcasting division, PURE, is finding things a bit tougher. Venerable Witan Investment Trust, founded 102 years ago, showed there is still life in the old dog as it outperformed its benchmark index in 2010. Net asset value (NAV) total return in 2010 was 18.9%, compared with a return on the trust's benchmark index of 15.5%.Fashion retailer French Connection made even more in the 12 months to 31 January than the hefty increase promised at last month's trading update. Profit before tax from continuing operations leapt to £7.3m from £0.7m the year before. It had predicted "at least £6.8m" in February. Sales rose 2% to £205m.Robert Wiseman Dairies is increasing the volume of milk it supplies to the Co-operative Group following a new two-year agreement that starts in August.Mainland European newspaper publisher Mecom said it had seen an improvement in digital advertising revenues and plans to pay a dividend this autumn.Oil and gas exploration company Bahamas Petroleum is to raise in the region of £45.6m through a placing of shares at 18.75p each. The funds will be used to speed up the company's exploration programme.Upstream oil and gas company Sound Oil hit a 52-week high Wednesday after its Italian subsidiary, Apennine Energy, signed a contract with Hydro Drilling International to supply a drilling rig for the Marciano-1ST well completion operation.