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Summer orders keep Ricardo motoring: Ricardo, the British engineering company that designs and builds engines for supercars and Formula 1, said that winning new contracts over the summer months gave it confidence in the year ahead. Dave Shemmans, Chief Executive, said: “The strong order intake in the final quarter of the last financial year has continued in the summer months and I am particularly pleased with the continued growth in new business from Asia.” The engineer was updating on trading from July 1 to October 29 and said one of the new orders was a large commercial vehicle project for a new customer in Asia. This contract kept the order book at £142 million, which was flat on the level at the end of June. Questor likes the fact that Ricardo operates in high-end engineering design, a market with barriers to entry that fast-growing Asian engineers have trouble overcoming. The engineering group’s orders are about 50% domestic, with the remainder split almost evenly between the U.S., Germany and Asia. This plugs the group into a stable U.K., recovering U.S. and fast-growing Asian markets. During the period ended October, the company also announced a small acquisition of motorcycle design business Vepro. The balance sheet remains robust, with Ricardo doubling net cash to £12.6 million at the end of June, from £6.1 million at the same stage last year. The dividend is forecast to increase 6.5% to 16.3p and market consensus is for pretax profits of £26.2 million, on revenue of £252 million, giving earnings per share of 40.6p to the end of June 2015. The shares have risen 30% since we said buy and the outlook is still good. Ricardo at 647p+14.5p Questor Says ‘Hold’.

Sell Next as growth slows: The market was widely expecting a profit warning at Next after the company warned that sales had been hit by warm weather last month; and Questor wouldn’t be buying on the dip, as the shares are still looking overvalued. The company said sales growth was 5.4% during the third quarter to October 25, which was almost half the 10% growth that management was hoping for and short of market expectations for 6% growth. Across the business, it was Next Retail, the high street stores division that slowed the fastest, with third quarter sales growth down to 2.4%, from 5.8% in the year to date. Next Directory, the faster growing online and catalogue business, reported sales growth of 9.7% for the third quarter, down from 13.7% in the year to date. The current growth rates at Next Retail and Next Directory are a far cry from first half sales growth of 7.5% and 16.2% respectively. Next Retail contributes about 60% to total group sales, while Next Directory is about 40%. More worryingly, the guidance for the fourth quarter group sales growth was slashed from 4% to 1%. Another issue that could hinder growth at Next in the coming 12 months is the availability of credit, which would affect Next Directory sales. Next charges have an annual percentage rate of 25.99%, compared with the APR for a standard bank credit card of between 18% and 20%. Taking those factors together, it is difficult for Next shares to command the premium they do at present. Next is trading on about 16 times forecast earnings, which is an 18.5% premium to the wider retail sector on 13.5 times, and a 23% premium to Next’s own long-run average PE of about 13 times. Next at £64.15-20p Questor Says ‘Sell’.

Green giant: Shell has made an intriguing choice of Chairman in Chad Holliday. Oil men rarely have close links with the green lobby, excitable members of which disrupted Shell’s disposal of the Brent Spar installation in 1995. But Mr Holliday is a strong advocate of environmental responsibility, having co-chaired a UN working group on sustainable energy. Mr Holliday and the Executives should at least see eye-to-eye on the virtues of biofuels, which Shell produces from sugar cane at Brazilian joint venture Raizen. He took a pioneering interest in bioethanol when running U.S. chemicals group DuPont. PRs insist the arrival of the man who spun off Conoco does not presage a shake-up of Shell too. Even without it, he should prove more memorable than low-key predecessor Jorma Ollila. A distinctive name helps. Didn’t a pop group called Chad Holliday and the Twangin’ Teens top the charts in ‘62? Or perhaps I imagined that.

Shale threatened by oil slump, says Shell: Royal Dutch Shell will take an $8 billion hit and is unlikely to push ahead with new fracking projects in North America if oil prices languish at current levels for a year

Crude Oil At 0430GMT today, Brent crude oil one month futures contract is trading 0.41% or $0.35 lower at $85.89 per barrel. Yesterday, the contract declined 1.01% or $0.88, to settle at $86.24 per barrel after reports indicated that OPEC oil output rose by 53,000 barrels a day to 30.9 million barrels in October, a 14-month high.

US authorities have reopened an investigation into Standard Chartered to determine whether the UK bank hid transactions that flouted sanctions laws as it was settling a related action two years ago, people familiar with the matter said. The inquiry is a blow for StanChart and its embattled management team. Peter Sands, one of the longest serving chief executives of any global bank, faces growing doubts about his future after this week announcing the group’s third profits warning of the year. (Financial Times)

LONDON, Oct 30 (Reuters) - Britain's government published proposals to give the Bank of England new legal powers to control residential mortgage lending on Thursday, but said it wanted more evidence before deciding on a BoE request to regulate lending to landlords. The proposals are in line with finance minister George Osborne's desire to give the BoE greater oversight of residential mortgage lending to reduce the risk that the housing market could overheat and destabilise Britain's economy. "The government is proposing that the Bank is granted powers of direction for loan-to-value limits and debt-to-income limits for owner-occupied mortgages," Osborne said in a statement. The BoE's Financial Policy Committee (FPC) can already recommend limits on how much banks should lend mortgage applicants relative to their income and the value of their home. Both the BoE and the government want to beef up the FPC's powers by making such limits legally enforceable.

New figures from the lender, Nationwide, has shown that house prices for the UK edged up 0.5pc in October after falling in September. However, the annual rate of growth has slowed again and mortgage approvals are down 20pc on the beginning of the year

Countrywide Plc (CWD.L) Announced, in its interim management statement for the three month period to 30 September 2014, that it saw the best ever third quarter financial result on top of the strong performance reported for the first half of 2014 and further validated the strategy of building a broad based business across multiple products lines and geographic spread. The total income came in at £188.4 million, up by 22.0% from the same period in the preceding year.

Oil major Royal Dutch Shell has announced that its chairman of eight years Jorma Ollila is to step down next year, as the company reported a big jump in third-quarter earnings. Ollila, the former boss of mobile-phone group Nokia, will be replaced by current non-executive director Charles Holliday, who has worked for Shell since 2010.

Avoid African Barrick Gold until recovery takes root: Shares in African Barrick Gold rose 4.7% to 214.4p after brokers made reassuring noises about the miner’s ability to turn round its struggling mines. The miner’s third quarter results, which came out on October 23, showed signs of improvement. Gold production increased to about 190,986 ounces in the three months ended September - up 16% on the same period last year. The company also cut the costs of production by 13% on the same stage last year, to $1,098 per ounce. African Barrick said third quarter revenue was up 9% to $241 million, as the increased output more than offset lower gold prices. The cash position is also improving marginally, with total cash up $17 million to $287 million at September 30, leaving an estimate for net cash of $145 million once the $142 million loan facility is subtracted. The company had cash of $401 million at the end of June last year. However, Questor would still be reluctant to jump back into this high-cost gold miner. The market expects pretax profits of $149.4 million this year on revenue of $931.1 million, giving earnings per share of 25.2c (15.6p). African Barrick is a higher cost operator and, given the weaker prices in nearly all commodities this year, it is at risk from gold falling lower. African Barrick Gold at 214.4p+9.4p Questor Says ‘Avoid’

Standard Chartered fall is not buying opportunity: Standard Chartered shares offer investors exposure to the fast-growing Asian economies and a dividend yield of 4.7%. They are also starting to look cheap on some measures having fallen by more than a third in the last year. However, there are a number of reasons why, despite those attractions, Questor is not a buyer. Banking is ultimately a very simple business: you take deposits from customers and pay them 0.5% on their savings; then you loan that money out at a much higher rate - let’s say 5%. The difference, in this case of 4.5%, is known as the net interest margin. This has to cover your costs and the hits from any loans that go bad and are never repaid. The rest is profit, which can be reinvested in the company or returned to shareholders. Banks conduct other activities - such as trading on financial markets, advising on mergers and acquisitions and managing customer’s investments - but these are peripheral to the core business of taking deposits and making loans. Standard Chartered’s profits fell 16% in the three months to September, largely because of impairments on commercial loans. The bank said quarterly impairment charges increased by $250 million to $593 million, as corporate and institutional clients were hurt by weakening commodity markets. In a further worrying development, Standard Chartered, which is usually bullish on China’s prospects, sounded a cautionary note on the world’s second largest economy: “We remain watchful in India, in China and of commodity exposures more broadly, where we have continued to tighten our underwriting criteria and reduce our exposures.” The bank’s shares have fallen 44% from £18 in March 2013 to 998.4p, and now trade on 10 times forecast earnings. This makes them look cheap given Standard Chartered’s track record for growth. But until the bank proves that can be replicated, and the problems aren’t worse, the shares are a sell. Standard Chartered at 998.4p-96.6p Questor Says ‘Sell’.

Awesome source: British Sky Broadcasting has invested $7 million in Whistle Sports, a content group whose stars include five trick-shot basketball players and a man dressed as a giant panda. What could possibly go right? Big businesses usually fail when they try to hang with the kids, just like their middle-aged Bosses. The billions the City wasted on dotbomb businesses such as Boo.com memorialise that. However, BSkyB’s Boss Jeremy Darroch has competitive reasons for donning a snapback and skinny jeans. Conventional broadcasters are losing viewers to the freelance video bloggers of YouTube. Alfie Deyes’ PointlessBlog is about as entertaining to oldsters as watching a bluebottle buzzing round a ceiling light. But it amuses millions of other so-called “millennials” turned off by professionally made telly.

Next: weather-beaten Wolfson: Next has cut its central full-year guidance for pretax profits from £795 million to £770 million, compared with £695 million last time. The warning is so unusual that the stock market darling will probably escape the accusation that it has used the weather as an excuse for buying mistakes. Its last profits warning was in 1998. Lord W says he wants to share as much data with investors as possible. No kidding. Next has guided the market on profits no less than six times this year. Wednesday’s warning, which depressed the shares only temporarily, merely rebased expectations to where they stood in March. Market scribblers are, however, reduced to mouthpieces by profits guidance from companies, even as they cower beneath the impending blow of commission reform. They can at least have some fun fiddling with stock valuations, though even here Lord W plays a part by publishing a ceiling price for share buybacks. They will mostly conclude that given the strength of the business, a forward earnings multiple of 15 times represents decent value compared with Marks and Spencer at 12, or Debenhams at eight.

End nearer for Brent as platforms go: The giant oilfield which gave the Brent crude index its name and kicked off the North Sea boom in the 1970s is closer to being decommissioned after Shell retired two of its remaining three platforms

Crude Oil At 0430GMT today, Brent crude oil one month futures contract is trading 0.1% or $0.09 lower at $87.03 per barrel. Separately, OPEC’s Secretary-General has stated that there was no need for markets to panic over oil prices as they would eventually stabilise and return to equilibrium. Yesterday, the contract climbed 1.27% or $1.09, to settle at $87.12 per barrel after the US Energy Information Administration announced that oil stockpiles rose by 2.1 million barrels, lesser than expectations of an increase of 3.4 million barrels in the week ending October 24.

Oct 29 (Reuters) - Shares of Shell Midstream Partners LP , a master limited partnership formed by Royal Dutch Shell Plc, rose as much as 40 percent in their market debut, in what was the largest initial public offering by an MLP in a decade. Shares of the MLP, which owns stakes in four pipelines in Texas and Louisiana, opened at $32. They touched a high of $32.35, valuing the company at about $2.18 billion, based on its 67.5 million outstanding common units. Shell Midstream's initial public offering raised about $920 million after the size of the offering was increased and priced above the expected range. About 40 million common units were sold at $23 per share, above the expected price range of $19-$21. (Reporting by Amrutha Gayathri in Bangalore; Editing by Savio D'Souza)

Shell Midstream Partners, the pipeline company backed by Europe's biggest oil company, raised $920m in its initial public offering (IPO) in the US. The 40m shares on sale fetched a price of $23 each. That was above the marketed range of between $19 to $21 a piece, according to the statement released yesterday by the company. Trading is due to start today in New York.

Standard Life reported a 13% increase in fee revenue from continuing operations over the nine months to the end of September, to hit £1,032m. That came as assets under administration from continuing operations increased to £290.0bn, driven by net inflows of £4.3bn and the acquisition of Ignis Asset Management. Management highlighted how the increased focus on fee business, which the disposal of its Canadian operations will allow, will enable it to return £1.75bn of capital to shareholders.

Goldman Sachs forecast on Sunday that oil will average $85 a barrel in the first quarter of 2015, down from an earlier forecast of $100. Brent, the international benchmark, was trading up 22 cents on Tuesday at $86.06 a barrel. (Financial Times)