London open: Banks and miners drag down Footsie

Mining stocks are dragging the Footsie down in early going, while banks are also weak as investors bank profits after the sector shot up on Friday.Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) is one of the big fallers in the banking sector after the long-awaited report from the Financial Services Authority (FSA) on the near-collapse of the bank which necessitated a government rescue. The FSA highlighted seven factors that contributed to the bank's fall from grace. These included: significant weaknesses in the bank's capital position; over-reliance on risky short-term wholesale funding; concerns about about RBS's underlying asset quality; the disastrous acquisition of ABN Amro.Those same factors were, in turn, aggravated by flaws in the FSA's supervisory regime, "which provided insufficient challenge to RBS." More specifically, the report states that, "the FSA was too focused on conduct regulation at the time and its prudential supervision of major banks was inadequate." Pearson, best known as the publisher of the Financial Times and Penguin paperbacks, is to sell its 50% stake in FTSE International Limited (FTSE) to the London Stock Exchange Group for £450m in cash. Exillon Energy, the oil producer with assets in Russia, said average daily production for the group reached 10,935 barrels per day in November, exactly 1,000 barrels a day higher than average daily production in October.Wireless technology and computer chip company CSR will be discontinuing investment in the areas of digital television systems-on-a-chip and silicon tuners. CSR expects to realise, on an annualised basis, $60m of operating cost reductions as a result of these changes and other efficiency savings, and to incur an incremental $10m of restructuring costs by the end of the second quarter of 2012. Around a quarter of the firm's 3,200 global workforce are set for the chop next year, the company said, and as is often the case, there was no place for sentiment in the market, even in the run-up to Christmas, with the shares rising sharply on the news.Also on the up among FTSE 250 stocks is baby and toddler products vendor Mothercare, on the back of bid speculation. Private equity groups are said to be sniffing round the company, which is having a tough time of it in the UK, although the overseas operations seem to be doing fine. The company slumped into the red at the half-year stage, and the shares have lost almost three-quarters of their value over the last year.Down among the tiddlers, Afferro Mining, the west Africa focused iron ore company, soars after announcing it is to sell its 38.5% stake in the Putu iron ore project in Liberia.Hopes that chairman David Ross would respond to shareholder grumbles and increase his recommended bid for struggling oil industry support services firm Cosalt have been dashed. In a letter to shareholders, Ross said that far from being a "bargain basement" offer, his 0.1p a share offer, which values the company at about £0.4m, is a fair reflection of the value of the cash-strapped company, which looks set to go belly-up before Christmas unless Ross's offer is accepted; the company is set to pay back a huge loan to Ross in the week before Christmas and does not have the funds to do so.FTSE 100 - RisersNext (NXT) 2,623.00p +1.08%Vodafone Group (VOD) 174.90p +0.43%Rexam (REX) 348.60p +0.37%Carnival (CCL) 2,198.00p +0.37%SABMiller (SAB) 2,190.00p +0.27%Sage Group (SGE) 287.30p +0.24%BT Group (BT.A) 193.80p +0.21%Centrica (CNA) 287.40p +0.21%Morrison (Wm) Supermarkets (MRW) 317.20p +0.19%Pearson (PSON) 1,145.00p +0.09%FTSE 100 - FallersInmarsat (ISAT) 409.60p -3.26%Eurasian Natural Resources Corp. (ENRC) 663.50p -3.14%Xstrata (XTA) 989.80p -2.15%Standard Chartered (STAN) 1,434.50p -1.65%Kazakhmys (KAZ) 927.50p -1.64%Antofagasta (ANTO) 1,208.00p -1.63%Glencore International (GLEN) 398.15p -1.62%GKN (GKN) 183.30p -1.61%Lloyds Banking Group (LLOY) 26.30p -1.55%Anglo American (AAL) 2,412.50p -1.49%FTSE 250 - RisersCSR (CSR) 187.00p +12.11%Mothercare (MTC) 173.00p +7.72%Thomas Cook Group (TCG) 15.60p +2.83%FTSE 250 - FallersInternational Personal Finance (IPF) 195.50p -4.21%Perform Group (PER) 203.70p -3.46%Laird (LRD) 140.00p -3.11%Renishaw (RSW) 925.00p -2.53%Rank Group (RNK) 147.10p -2.52%London Stock Exchange Group (LSE) 799.50p -2.50%--jh