London midday: Merrills takes a shine to banks

Footsie ended the morning at an intra-day high, driven by a strong performance from financial stocks and miners.Standard Life is the top riser after it announced a 'significant increase' in flows and sales in the fourth quarter. Life and pensions net inflows more than tripled to £1.3bn from £0.4bn a year earlier. Life and pensions sales of £4.2bn were a sizeable improvement on both the prior year (£3.2bn) and the third quarter (£3.0bn).Elsewhere in the financial sector banks are going well after an upbeat note on the UK lenders from Merrill Lynch. The US broker thinks the bad debt picture was at its worst in 2009 while 'funding markets can continue to improve.' Royal Bank of Scotland has had its 'buy' rating restored by Merrill Lynch, with a price target of 45p. The bank is 'one of the European banks that is most geared to a recovery in the global economy and credit markets.' Fellow part-nationalised lender Lloyds Banking is also upgraded to 'buy', as is Barclays, with the former sporting a price target of 80p and the latter a target of 415p. Not to feel left out, HSBC and Standard Chartered are also rated as buys, with the former also benefiting from an 'outperform' rating issued by Credit Suisse.Away from the financials the miners are having a good day, with Vedanta, Xstrata and Kazakhmys leading the sector higher.Mining giant Eurasian Natural Resources (ENRC) said production volumes in the three month ended 31 December further improved on the levels of the previous quarter, in line with expectations. Ferrochrome production increased 56.7% compared to last year and 5.7% from the previous quarter. Iron ore extraction was up 74.1% year-on-year, while saleable ore jumped 79.5%.Copper miner Antofagasta produced 442,500 tonnes of the red metal in 2009, ahead of its original forecast of 433,000 tonnes but lower than the 477,700 tonnes mined during the previous year. The lower production was mainly due to a reduction in output from its Los Pelambres mine in Chile.Also on the upturn is data search software Autonomy, which reported fourth quarter and full year figures that were in line with expectations. Of more interest to the market was a statement of confidence about the outlook for 2010. Revenues for the fourth quarter rose 53% to $223.1m, while adjusted net profits were $80.5m compared with $53.5m last year.Shares in AstraZeneca have fallen back after Morgan Stanley said it is pessimistic about data from trials of the drug group's lung cancer treatment Recentin. 'While consensus expectations are low, we anticipate that potential negative data from the HORIZON III phase III data could still lead to near term weakness,' the broker said.Power supplier Scottish & Southern Energy is on course for a 'moderate increase' in underlying profits this year, while the dividend for the year will be at least 70p, a 6% hike. Over the nine months to December the number of electricity and gas supply customer accounts in the Great Britain market increased by 200,000 to 9.2m. Hot on the heels of Tuesday's engine order from Sichuan Airlines, Rolls-Royce has announced another engine order, this time from Turkish Airlines. The contract is worth up to $170m to Rolls-Royce.Educational and financial information publisher Pearson, which owns the FT, has snapped up Medley Global Advisors, a company that provides macro intelligence to the world's leading investment banks, hedge funds and asset managers. In the mid-cap index, online gaming group PartyGaming is in demand but carpet retailer Carpetright falls back.PartyGaming, which owns the PartyPoker.com online gambling site, said fourth quarter sales surged 32% from the year before and it remains confident about the full year outlook.Carpetright reported sales overall rose by 7% recently despite problems with cold weather. UK and Ireland were the star turns with the sales in the 13 weeks to January up 7.7%, with like-for-like sales up 2.3%. A net four stores opened, increasing the total to 5,942.The share price of Supercart has virtually halved since early October but the shares rallied today after the shopping trolley maker received a £480,000 order from Toys 'R' Us. Contract news was also driving up up the price of recycling container supplier Straight, which bagged a multi-million pound container contract with local government purchasing agencies.Environmentally friendly crop productivity firm Plant Impact said its nitrogen release technology, known as PiNT, has produced positive results in US Department of Agriculture studies.FTSE 100 - RisersStandard Life (SL.) 205.10p +3.74%Barclays (BARC) 299.00p +3.23%London Stock Exchange Group (LSE) 668.50p +3.00%Autonomy Corporation (AU.) 1,612.00p +2.74%Inmarsat (ISAT) 726.00p +2.69%Vedanta Resources (VED) 2,660.00p +2.47%Lloyds Banking Group (LLOY) 55.55p +2.40%FTSE 100 - FallersAstraZeneca (AZN) 2,836.50p -3.22%BAE Systems (BA.) 340.10p -2.02%TUI Travel (TT.) 265.30p -1.38%Diageo (DGE) 1,049.00p -1.22%Cobham (COB) 233.50p -1.18%Whitbread (WTB) 1,426.00p -1.18%Schroders NV (SDRC) 989.50p -1.15%