London open: Retailers lead Footsie lower

London's top stocks have opened lower as retailers fall back at the beginning of the Christmas sales reporting season.High street retailer Next is lower even though it increased full-year profit forecasts again in response to better than expected sales in the run up to Christmas. Sales for the 22 weeks to Christmas Eve jumped 4.6% at Next Retail and by 3.2% on a like for like basis, including direct sales, and by 1.6% excluding them. Next Directory sales rose 6.8%. Profits for the year to 31 January will be between £490m and £500m.In further evidence that things may be improving on the high street, John Lewis reported record sales over the Christmas and New Year period, beating its previous best of £500.7m posted in 2007.Meanwhile, Fortnum & Mason, the luxury department store on London's Piccadilly, upped like-for-like sales rise by more than 10% in the first three weeks of December.Financials are higher. Man Group, Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds Banking are posting gains.Kraft Foods is to bump up the cash element of its bid for UK gum and chocolate company Cadbury. Kraft has sold its North American pizza business to Swiss foods behemoth Nestle for $3.7bn, and intends to use most of the proceeds of the sale to fund a partial cash alternative to its offer for Cadbury shares, worth 60p a share.Nestle, meanwhile, has told the UK Takeover Panel it does not intend to make, or participate in, a formal offer for Cadbury.Premier Oil has agreed with Serica Energy that it will farm-in to a 50% equity interest and assume operatorship of Block 22/19c in the UK Central North Sea. Block 22/19c contains the Oates and Bowers Palaeocene prospects.Balfour Beatty said Hong Kong-based infrastructure contractor Gammon Construction, in which the support services contracting firm has a 50% shareholding, has been awarded two new contracts valued at HK $2.27bn (£180m). Dublin based cement maker CRH expects full-year pre-tax profits to drop 55% and said trading conditions remain difficult.Construction and housebuilding group Galliford Try said it has been confirmed as a construction partner of the Equitix consortium, which has been appointed as the preferred bidder on the Cambridgeshire Building Schools for the Future (BSF) programme.Business is blooming at garden and horticultural products firm William Sinclair after a difficult 2008.Public sector outsourcing firm May Gurney has had its long term maintenance contract with South West Water renewed and extended.Agriculture and engineering firm Carr's Milling said it continues to expect an improved result for the full year, although trading in the first quarter was substantially below that for the strong first quarter of the previous year. Educational IT specialist RM Group has firmed up some of the details of its deal to provide on screen electronic marking services for the International Baccalaureate (IB) diploma qualification exams.FTSE 100 - RisersMan Group (EMG) 324.60p +3.91%Royal Bank of Scotland Group (RBS) 32.55p +1.40%BAE Systems (BA.) 364.90p +1.08%Lloyds Banking Group (LLOY) 52.65p +0.75%Old Mutual (OML) 112.00p +0.54%Scottish & Southern Energy (SSE) 1,169.00p +0.52%Anglo American (AAL) 2,782.50p +0.47%FTSE 100 - FallersNext (NXT) 2,080.00p -2.76%Marks & Spencer Group (MKS) 404.00p -2.04%Tesco (TSCO) 422.10p -1.47%Cadbury (CBRY) 793.50p -1.43%Carnival (CCL) 2,126.00p -1.12%Compass Group (CPG) 453.30p -1.09%Sainsbury (J) (SBRY) 320.80p -1.05%