London open: Footsie recoups losses

London's leading shares have claw backed a small proportion of yesterday's heavy losses, encouraged by the late rally on Wall Street yesterday. Royal Bank of Scotland is leading the way forward after the FT reported that bank executives and officials at the Treasury are talking about ways for the bank to exit the toxic asset scheme. Lloyds is also going well. Weather conditions in Australia have improved enough to allow Rio Tinto to end the force majeure event that's disrupted supplies of aluminium from Boyne Smelters near Gladstone. The company's aluminium arm, Rio Tinto Alcan, says transport operations have now returned to normal.After a lull over the Christmas period Autonomy has started banging out the contract agreement announcements again, adding two more contract wins on Friday to the four announced earlier in the week. Verizon Communications and an unnamed US law firm have signed up to use the company's Intelligent Data Operating Layer software.Drugs giant AstraZeneca has defended the trial results of Brilinta, its potential blockbuster blood thinning drug, after enquiries about some of the data from the US Food and Drug Administration. The trial saw more negative responses in the US compared with elsewhere.Staff at British Airways are expected to celebrate the airline's last day of trading on the London Stock Exchange as BA by voting for further strike action. The carrier's £5.7bn merger with Spain's Iberia should complete today, almost 24 years after it was privatised by Margaret Thatcher's Conservative government. Merchant bank Close Brothers remains on course for a 'satisfactory' outcome this year despite a pick-up in bad debts, though it had flagged this previously.Trophy handbag maker the Mulberry Group put in a strong trading performance over Christmas and now expects full year results to be ahead of expectations.Snow and ice on Britain's roads before Christmas has cost logistics group Stobart about £1.5m, although it's still on track to meet reduced profit expectations for the year.