London midday: Banks drag Footsie down

Footsie made a valiant effort to finish the morning in the blue but came up just short, thanks largely to the weakness of financial stocks.Barclays is sharply lower, after Qatar's sovereign wealth fund said it was selling half of the warrants it holds in the bank. Qatar Holding is selling 379.22m shares that it is converting from warrants at an exercise price of 197.775p each, but said it will remain a long-term shareholder in the bank.Speculators have put two and two together and surmised that the Barclays sale could be a prelude to Qatar making a renewed assault on supermarket group Sainsbury, where it has a 26% stake. The two parties had a protracted courtship during 2007 which ended with the sovereign wealth fund opting not to make a bid for the UK’s third largest supermarket group by sales.Lloyds Banking Group is also in a selling mood, offloading the Bank of Scotland Portfolio Management Service and two other private client businesses to Rathbone Brothers for £35.4m.Elsewhere in the financial sector investors are spurning insurers such as Old Mutual and Friends Provident and properties such as SEGRO and Liberty International.Fast growing software company Autonomy is finding the market hard to please. Despite another spell of strong organic growth in the third quarter, the shares are the worst performers among Footsie stocks. The data search specialist said revenues in the three months to 30 September rose to $191.61m from $121.11m in the third quarter of 2008. Third quarter adjusted profit before tax climbed to $64.27m from $53.67m in the third quarter of 2008, within the guidance parameters given earlier this year by the company but towards the bottom end of the range.Education group and FT publisher Pearson is ahead after it upped its estimate of full year earnings after trading better than expected in recent weeks. 'Pearson is trading ahead of expectations and we now expect full year adjusted earnings to be at or above 60p per share, assuming that the current exchange rate of £1:$1.64 prevails in the fourth quarter,' it said.Swiss mining company Xstrata's operating and financial performance in the third quarter remained strong. The company had a mixed spell on the production front, with increased volumes of thermal and semi-soft coal, platinum group metals (PGMs), refined nickel, zinc in concentrate and lead metal compared to the third quarter of 2008, but lower volumes of ferrochrome and copper. Among second liners online gaming firm Partygaming lost more than a tenth of its value in early trade as founder Anurag Dikshit said he will sell up to 75m shares in the company. Even taking into account today’s sharp fall, Partgaming’s shares are at the twice the level they were at a year ago.Balfour Beatty has snagged a batch of contracts in the US, the majority of which are with the US military. The construction and engineering contractor announced details of $449m of new contracts in the US states of Virginia, South Carolina, Georgia, Texas and North Carolina.Bakery chain Greggs is taking a pasting despite serving up a 2.5% rise in third quarter sales. On a like for like basis, sales were only up 0.2% year on year.Car dealer Inchcape's full year results are expected to be significantly ahead of previous expectations, but cautioned that conditions are expected to remain challenging well into the second half of 2010.Oil companies provide some cheer. Oil and gas exploration company Sterling Energy has finally sold off its US business for an initial $90m after initially putting it up for sale in April 2008. Meanwhile, shares in Petroceltic surged after the company said a post-fracture stimulation had substantially increased the flow rate at its AT-1 well. Completing the triumvirate of oil companies issuing good news, AIM-listed oil explorer Global Petroleum has had a positive result on the fifth well of its part-owned Leighton project.Earthport executive chairman Mike Harrison has decided to pass all executive responsibilities on to chief executive officer James Bergman after the electronic payments firm said full year losses had doubled. Harrison remains as non-executive chairman.Assets managed by private client stockbroker and fund manager Hargreaves Lansdown jumped by more than 20% in the past three months as rising stock markets 'galvanized investors into action'. Total assets under management jumped by 22% to £14.5bn at end September, compared to £11.9bn at end June and £10.3bn a year ago.FTSE 100 - RisersSainsbury (J) (SBRY) 347.00p +5.12%Pearson (PSON) 844.00p +2.68%Diageo (DGE) 996.00p +2.36%BT Group (BT.A) 136.80p +1.94%National Grid (NG.) 596.00p +1.71%Next (NXT) 1,840.00p +1.60%Kazakhmys (KAZ) 1,321.00p +1.54%Smiths Group (SMIN) 970.50p +1.52%Reed Elsevier (REL) 467.00p +1.52%British Airways (BAY) 217.00p +1.50%FTSE 100 - FallersAutonomy Corporation (AU.) 1,488.00p -6.71%Barclays (BARC) 364.30p -4.65%Burberry Group (BRBY) 562.50p -2.43%ICAP (IAP) 451.70p -2.10%Wolseley (WOS) 1,436.00p -1.91%Old Mutual (OML) 112.80p -1.91%Friends Provident Group (FP.) 82.15p -1.79%Rexam (REX) 276.20p -1.64%SEGRO (SGRO) 379.00p -1.56%Liberty International (LII) 512.50p -1.44%