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Oil price plummeted to a new four-year low on Thursday, after members of the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries could not reach an agreement on cutting output. Negotiations in Vienna were unsuccessful and that the cartel will now hold production at current levels, as experts warn that the price of Brent could fall as low as $60 a barrel over the coming months. - The Times

Strong start for Finsbury after bumper deal: Cake and bread-maker Finsbury Food Group said revenues grew to £57.3 million during the four months to 27 September, showing organic growth of 3.9% in the period.

Avoid AO World as profits slump: Internet retailers are a funny business. The usual measures such as profit before tax are considered passé and investors are instead guided towards growth rates and adjusted earnings in order to support extraordinary valuations. Questor thinks investors should get back to basics and ignore the bubble in share prices. The company reported revenue £217.1 million, an increase of 25.1%. Its adjusted earnings more than doubled to £7.3 million during the first six months ending September 30. John Roberts, Chief Executive, described the performance as “another period of strong trading”. Given the results, investors would probably have been perplexed to see the shares down 1% to 214.5p. However, shareholders could be forgiven for being confused. They had to leaf through pages of effusive language on the growth prospects before turning to page 10, which showed the company had made just £779,000 in reported pretax profits, less than half the £2.14 million it posted at the same stage last year. Questor thinks that any company can strip out the costs it doesn’t like and argue they are “one-offs”. This should be the only measure that investors care about; all else is vanity, or even worse. Investors who are drawn on to the rocks by the siren call of growth will end up losing their money very quickly. Questor thinks that high growth comes with risk and a more conservative rating of about 16 times earnings should reflect that risk. So taking the forecast earnings of 1.84p for the year ended March and applying a conservative rating of 16 times earnings reaches a forecast share price of about 30p. Investors don’t have to agree with the methodology, but sticking to the basics is the best way to protect investment capital from a precipitous fall in value. AO World at 217.3p+0.3p. Questor Says “Sell”.

Opec: the prisoner of Vienna: After 2010, Opec’s largest producer, Saudi Arabia, had a production cost under $10 a barrel, while Brent crude traded over $100 a barrel, on average. They could have pumped more, driven prices down and made more money in the short term. So demand for Opec’s oil has slowed. Its forecasts imply 29 million barrels-per-day of demand for its product next year versus its 30 million-barrels production ceiling, Deutsche Bank notes. So this week’s 166th Opec conference in Vienna would normally be nailed on to announce a production cut of 1 million barrels or so. In reality, production cuts risk more defections than a Soviet-era ballet. Saudi Arabia is producing 1 million more barrels than it did before Opec adopted the production ceiling. The kingdom reduced output by 6 million barrels a day over five years in the 1980s, but fellow Opec countries did not follow. The Saudi response by late 1985 was to raise output, sending oil prices below $10. Already Russia, a non-Opec member, has signalled it will maintain output levels next year even though it would, naturally, prefer less global production overall. State-owned Rosneft must maintain production. It needs the cash. And Saudi now seems content to protect its market share and let prices fall. How un-cartel like.

At 0430GMT today, Brent crude oil one month futures contract is trading 1.53% or $1.19 lower at $76.56 per barrel, ahead of the OPEC meet in Vienna scheduled today. Yesterday, the contract declined 0.74% or $0.58, to settle at $77.75 per barrel, amid rising expectations that the OPEC would not mutually agree to reduce productions from its countries. Additionally, the EIA reported that weekly crude stockpiles rose by 1.95 million barrels to 383 million last week.

ABUJA, Nov 26 (Reuters) - Nigeria's National Assembly said on Wednesday oil major Shell should pay $3.96 billion for a 2011 spill at its offshore Bonga oilfield in the latest assessment of damage to the environment. The non-binding decision comes after years of analysis by various Nigerian state agencies, which have proposed a range of fines as high as $11.5 billion. The parliament finally reached a decision based on the report of the National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency (NOSDRA), which previously recommended a fine of $5 billion. Shell declined to comment. The company has previously said it took responsibility for the spill and had cleaned the area. The parliament's decision is non-binding as it only has the power to recommend fines to the government and cannot enforce them. NOSDRA estimated that around 40,000 barrels were spilled when a tanker was loading crude at the offshore platform operated by Shell's subsidiary SNEPCO. The Bonga field was producing 200,000 barrels per day at the time. NOSDRA has previously said the spill had hurt locals in the area who rely on fishing for their livelihoods as the slick covered an area of around 950 square km. "Since all efforts by this committee were tactfully rebuffed by SNEPCO, (it) has decided to adopt the damage assessment report submitted by NOSDRA as the lead agency in all oil spill management," Uche Ekwunife, chairman of the environmental committee told the assembly. Shell is also being pursued in a class action case for two other spills in the Niger Delta in 2008. In June, it offered 30 million pounds ($51 million) in compensation to 15,000 residents in the Bodo Community but this was rejected. The United Nations Environment Programme has criticised Shell in the past for not doing enough to clean up spills and maintain infrastructure. Nigeria is Africa's largest oil exporter and an OPEC member but the environmental toll has been huge. The mangrove creeks of the delta region are heavily polluted mainly due to leaks from illegal pipeline tapping and sabotage. Foreign companies have been selling their stakes in onshore oilfields after becoming frustrated with industrial scale theft and resulting spills, which show no signs of abating. On Monday, Shell had to shut down a pipeline as a result of a new leak close to where it was removing oil taps. (Writing by Julia Payne, editing by David Evans)

IG sees record-breaking quarter: Online trading company IG Group will break its own quarterly revenue record when it reports its second quarter results, the group announced in a pre-close trading update.

Call for North Sea tax cuts to boost industry: The oil and gas industry has called for tax cuts to boost activity in the North Sea amid warnings firms may abandon the area unless the Government does more to encourage investment.

Aviva investors should not sleepwalk into deal: Aviva’s potential tie-up with rival Friends Life saw its shares fall heavily after investors feared that the U.K.’s second biggest insurer may end up paying a high price in an attempt to repair its dividend. What’s more, Friends Life investors might be losing their own chunky dividend income after they join forces with a larger rival. Mark Wilson, his replacement as Chief Executive, along with Chairman John McFarlane, have focused on cash generation and repairing the balance sheet since to turn around Aviva’s fortunes. The strategy is working, demonstrated by the near doubling of the share price from May 2012 to yesterday‘s close. Aviva’s share price has given the company the opportunity to propose this bold merger deal. However, insurance, much like investing, is all about the long term and the U.K. insurance market remains challenging. Aviva has almost halved in value since the turn of the millennium. The shares were worth more than £10 in 2000 before the company’s profits and share price collapsed in 2002 after the dotcom bust. On this basis it looks like Friends Life investors should probably pocket the money and run. Friends’ forecast dividend yield of 6.1% will be difficult to replace, but both Shell “B” shares, GlaxoSmithkline and AstraZeneca offer alternative dividends that are around the 5% mark. For Aviva investors the deal may betray management’s belief that they want to take advantage of the shares reaching a short-term high watermark at more than £5. Retail shareholders would be better served taking their money elsewhere and leaving this one to management. Aviva at 510p-29p. Questor Says “Avoid”.

Gemfields unearths 40-carat ruby in Mozambique: Gemfields said on Tuesday it had unearthed an “exceptional” 40-carat ruby at its Montepuez mine in Mozambique.

Bashing the banks: The share prices of the U.K.’s big five banks are down an average of 5% over the past year. Britain’s biggest building society, Nationwide, by definition has no share price. But if it did, it would probably be soaring. One reason is simple enough – Nationwide’s business is doing rather well. It is benefiting from banks’ ongoing weakness, as they struggle to repair damaged balance sheets, firefight smouldering scandals and sweat to convince customers they can be trusted again. It even seems to be off the hook with regulators, who in the middle of last year slapped it with aggressive new capital requirements but are now setting leverage demands lower than expected. Clearly there are risks. The overheated southeast of England property market could suffer a tumble in prices, especially once interest rates start to rise. The issue could be exacerbated in interest-only mortgages ahead of a glut of maturities in the next five to 10 years. But Nationwide may be better insulated than most. Only 30% of its mortgages are interest-only, compared with the typical market-wide ratio of 40-50%. It also has the benefit of not being egged on by shareholders to ramp up risk and returns. It can retreat from a market if it feels in danger of getting carried away.

Zoopla needs to renovate to keep investors coming through the door: Zoopla could do with a lick of paint, too. Shares in the house-hunting website fell another 6% on Tuesday to 179p, leaving the stock 19% below its June flotation price. Even rundown Cumbrian terraces aren’t losing value that fast. The underlying business seems to be doing OK. Buoyed by a still pretty gassy U.K. property market, Zoopla reported a 24% increase in sales for the year to the end of September and a 35% increase in adjusted earnings before interest, depreciation and other nasties. The 6% fall in basic earnings per share was apparently a one-off hit from the costs of the company’s summertime stock market flotation. The shares are still pretty generously valued – on a price-earnings multiple of about 26, putting them on a par with bigger rival Rightmove, where the key metric of success – the website’s so-called average revenue per agent – is twice Zoopla’s level. Rightmove’s market cap is nearly three times its smaller rival. Altogether more Kensington and Chelsea than Barrow-in-Furness. Zoopla’s spin is that this gives room for growth – but not if Agents Mutual is a success and squeezes the 40% share of the market Mr Chesterman currently claims.

Santander: inside job: Thin pickings for the headhunters here. Santander has replaced Chief Executive Javier Marín (after less than two years in the job and with little explanation) with Chief financial officer José Antonio Álvarez. This is how things are done at Santander. When Chairman Emilio Botín passed away in September the bank did not hesitate to name his daughter Ana (who ran the U.K. business) as his replacement. There was no need to scour the globe for candidates for the top two jobs at Santander. Other elements of Santander’s strategy also have to be refined. Under Mr Botín, Santander happily traded in and out of shares in subsidiaries. But that has left the bank with an uncertain acquisition strategy. Most recently it has been linked with Italy’s Monte dei Paschi di Siena – an awful idea (Santander has denied entertaining it). But after so long in the CFO’s chair, will Mr Álvarez be willing to change old habits? There are signs of progress, particularly when it comes to corporate governance. The board has previously been criticised for being too homogeneous, but big changes are under way. The appointment of independent Directors from the U.K. and Mexico, also announced on Tuesday, gives the board some diversity. Even the appointment of Mr Álvarez as CEO suggests a more even spread of experience (and perhaps power) between Chairman and Chief Executive than existed between Emilio Botín and the relatively youthful Mr Marín.

Oil nations fail to halt fall in crude: The price of oil fell by more than $1 a barrel after a meeting between some of the world’s largest oil-producing nations failed to reach agreement on how to address a growing supply glut.

Zoopla revenues rise ahead of rival’s launch: Online property portal Zoopla’s audience has increased by a third in the past year, helping to boost its revenues by 24% – but its share price has suffered as a new rival prepares to launch.

At 0430GMT today, Brent crude oil one month futures contract is trading 0.2% or $0.16 higher at $78.49 per barrel. Yesterday, the contract declined 1.69% or $1.35, to settle at $78.33 per barrel, after Saudi Arabian Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi along with his counterparts from Venezuela, Russia and Mexico did not agree to slash oil productions ahead of an OPEC meeting. Additionally, oil prices came under pressure after the API reported that crude stockpiles rose by 2.8 million barrels last week.

OIL COLLAPSE TO BRING $200BN BOOST Oil prices are falling, and the world's economies will benefit massively as a result, according to economists at the French bank Societe Generale. Around $80 a barrel is the current going rate for oil, due to a cocktail of low demand and rising supply

Brownfield land could make way for 1 million homes: England has enough brownfield land to build more than 1 million new homes, with a quarter of it in public hands, according to a leading property consultancy that urges councils to make sites cheaper for house builders to buy.

Sky remains sceptical of quad play as rivals prepare for launch: Pay TV group Sky, recently rebranded from BSkyB, remained unconvinced by the need for a mobile offering, after its biggest rival BT looked poised to buy either EE or O2 in a £10 billion mobile deal.

Smith & Nephew soars on rumours of Stryker interest: Shares in Smith & Nephew spiked by almost 10% on Monday afternoon following reports that its U.S. rival Stryker is considering returning with a £10 billion takeover bid.