London afternoon: Weak retailers out of step

Leading shares are consolidating the morning's gains, though retailers decline to join the party. Confusion and speculation surrounds the acquisition and fund raising intentions of general insurer RSA. Reports in today's FT suggest RSA indicated at a recent investors conference that it was looking at acquisitions similar in scale to its £600m purchase of Nordic insurer Codan, and that it might fund any such purchases through a rights issue.RSA, however, has refuted the view that chief financial officer George Culmer said anything new about the company's acquisition plans at the investors conference, according to Credit Suisse analyst Paul Lloyd. 'Having spoken to the company this morning, RSA maintains that it said nothing new over and above comments already made on its strategy over time and merely gave examples of the types of deals it had done in the past including bolt-ons and Codan when questioned about the sorts of deals it could potentially look at,' Lloyd said. Elsewhere in the sector Aviva, Prudential and Standard Life join RSA on the slide.In a generally firmer oil sector, BG has announced another oil discovery offshore Brazil just days after it revealed a huge find in the Santos Basin. The latest, Abare West, is also in the Santos Basin - in the pre-salt BM-S-9 concession area - approximately 290km off the coast of Sao Paulo State. BG owns 30% of the prospect alongside Petrobas (45% and operator) and Repsol 25%. Fellow energy firm Tullow Oil is on the climb on rumours of bid interest from Italian oil giant ENI. Bid speculation is also driving up the share price of hedge fund manager Man Group, with some traders putting Barclays ion the frame as a potential bidder.Department store chain Debenhams reported a 3.8% drop in second half like-for-like sales, but expects pre-tax profits for the full-year to be ahead of last year and in line with expectations. The shares fall back in line with many others in the sector including fashion retailer Next, due to declare results tomorrow, clothes to food store Marks & Spencer, DIY outfits Hoem Retail and Kingfisher and supermarket Sainsbury.Specialist homewares retailer Dunelm's is going great guns after full-year profit was bang in line with forecasts. Pre-tax profit for the 53 weeks to 4 July jumped 9% to £53.5m and by 6.8% on a 52-week basis. Like for like sales were down just 0.5% versus the 5.6% decline in H1. LfL sales for the first 10 weeks of the financial year jumped 16.1%.ITV could face changes to the terms of its business with advertisers after the Competition Commission indicated it was willing to alter the terms of the broadcaster's Contract Rights Renewal (CRR) Undertakings, though it does not advocate their scrapping altogether. The share price reacts badly to the news; investors had been hoping that the CRR scheme would be rescinded.Anite warned that profit in the first half is expected to be significantly lower than the record profits that were reported in the prior year. The software group said the current trading year has been challenging, with less favourable currency movementsand seasonality than last year.Hot on the heels of a deal to provide the UK retail arm of Russian energy company Gazprom with smart metering services, Bglobal has signed a deal with Superdrug, the UK's second-largest beauty and health retailer, to install smart meters at all of its UK stores, totalling over 900 sites.Hallin Marine, the AIM listed provider of subsea solutions to the oil and gas industry, reported a modest fall in interim pre-tax profit but issued a confident outlook for the business. The group, which makes underwater equipment for the oil and gas industries, said pre-tax profit fell to $10.1m from $13.8m a year earlier. Revenues increased to $60.27m from $59.58m before.In broker action telecommunications giant BT is wanted after Credit Suisse upgraded the stock from 'neutral' to 'outperform' while Johnson Matthey, hurt by a Morgan Stanley downgrade yesterday is lifted by a Goldman Sachs upgrade todayOn the economic front, the monthly survey from the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) said that more agents had reported a rise, rather than a fall in values, in August. The net balance was +11% last month versus minus 6% in July. That's the highest proportion since May 2007.