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Friday's news and tips

SUMMARY: Brewers Young & Co and Fullers both report positive performance, but growth is set to slow at Sportech. Plus a round-up of business press headlines and share tips
November 20, 2009

■ London-focused pub group and brewer Young & Co's Brewery has been encouraged by performance in the first seven weeks of the second half of its financial year.

■ London-based pub group Fullers lifted underlying first half profits by 18 per cent as it shrugged off the recession, though it is more cautious going forward.

■ Football pools firm Sportech expects profits to grow again this year but not at the rate previously anticipated.

■ Trading remains subdued at wireless specialist Anite with first half underlying operating profits expected to slide to £3.5m from £12.4m this time last year.

■ Fund manager Gartmore has confirmed its intention to float in London with an offer expected to be completed by mid-December.

■ Product quality and safety tester Intertek is in talks to buy the business assurance division of Det Norske Veritas (DNV) with a large chunk of its own shares.

■ Popular investment trust RIT Capital Partners has seen its net asset value (NAV) per share rise 21.7 per cent in the first half of its financial year thanks to the global rally and some smart trades.

■ Ferrero, the Italian chocolate maker that is considering a joint bid with US sweet maker Hershey for Cadbury, which may be interested in the UK firm's sweet and gum division, a report said today.

Continues below...

■ Fusion IP, which commercialises university research, said it has completed a licensing deal with a global orthopaedic company for the use of orthopaedic planning software developed at the University of Sheffield.

■ Shares in drug discovery technology and information company Cyprotex fell back after it said it had experienced lower than expected demand over the fourth quarter, including from its largest customer.

■ Drinks group Nichols has named Tim Croston, currently finance and operations boss of the Vimto soft drinks division, as its new finance director.

■ Shares in Angel Biotechnology took to the skies on Friday after the contract bio-manufacturing company announced the successful completion of its bi-annual regulatory checks.

■ John Lewis has had its strongest week of the year so far despite some rotten weather, with record demand for white goods pushing sales up 17.1 per cent at the department stores chain.

■ Floor coverings distributor Headlam group said the decline in like-for-like sales has slowed in the second half of the year in the UK operations.

■ Britain's biggest retailer, Tesco, is to continue its diversification away from its core supermarket business by offering a combined broadband and home phone service.

■ Weapons group Chemring has completed a private placement of fixed interest loan notes.

■ Valve actuator and gearbox maker Rotork expects this year's profits will be at the upper end of market forecasts.

■ Npower's call option over 29 per cent of multi-utility group Telecom Plus has lapsed. The arrangement was set up in 2006 when npower agreed to supply energy to Telecom Plus.

■ Investment company Caledonia Investments has settled on former De La Rue man Stephen King as its new finance director.

■ Online search marketing group Infoserve has said it will no longer be an Authorised Google AdWords Reseller from 7 January next year.

■ Technical recruitment firm Matchtec is seeing some signs of improved confidence in the sectors it serves.

■ Blue-collar HR firm Staffline expects earnings for 2009 to beat current expectations following a number of new business wins since June and cost cutting.

■ F&C Private Equity Trust, the private equity focused investment trust, is still waiting for a significant recovery in asset values, though some signs of improvement were seen in the third quarter.

FOR A SUMMARY OF LATEST MOVEMENTS IN EQUITY, COMMODITY AND CURRENCY MARKETS, SEE FT.COM'S MARKETS PAGE

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NEWSPAPER SHARE TIPS (20 NOV 2009):

NewspaperCompanyStancePriceIC View
The IndependentNational GridBuy645.5p
The TimesNational Grid

The shares are a solid hold

645.5p
The Daily TelegraphNational GridBuy645.5p
The IndependentUnite GroupBuy299.75p
The IndependentHuntsworthHold65.25p
The TimesPayPoint It is too soon to check out488p
The TimesAEA TechnologyTake profits28p
The Daily TelegraphBG GroupBuy£11.31

Full round-up of newspaper share tips (sourced from Sharecast)

PRESS HEADLINES:

Tesco's telecoms arm threatened a price war with the likes of BT, Virgin Media and Carphone Warehouse as it unveiled plans yesterday to offer bundled broadband and home phone packages for the first time.

Britain's biggest retailer announced that it had signed a five-year deal with Cable & Wireless to help it to provide broadband and home phone services, the Times reports.

Legal & General is poised to hire John Stewart, the former deputy chief executive of Barclays, as its new chairman, The Times has learnt. The UK's third-largest insurer is understood to have identified Mr Stewart, who ran the Woolwich building society until its takeover by Barclays in 2000, as its preferred candidate to replace Rob Margetts.

Speculation that Reckitt Benckiser, the household cleaning products group, could be close to a merger with Colgate-Palmolive was greeted with scepticism by analysts on Thursday. Reckitt shares initially gained 3 per cent on the speculation but closed 1 per cent up at £31.40 as analysts said they thought a deal was improbable. Colgate shares fell 2 per cent. Charlie Mills at Credit Suisse, which also acts as Reckitt's broker, said: "We are sceptical on the imminence of a deal between these two," the FT reports.

Ladbrokes, the bookmaker, announced plans to close its call centre at Aintree, Liverpool, with the potential loss of 263 jobs. The news comes three months after Chris Bell, the chief executive, ruled out closing its two call centres at Aintree and at Harrow, Middlesex, arguing that the economic case for doing so was not "compelling", the Times reports.

Britain is at growing risk of a "public debt spiral" unless the Government takes "drastic" action to cut the deficit, according to the OECD, world's leading economic institution. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development said that even if Britain reduces its deficit in-line with other leading nations, it will still have the rich world's biggest deficit from now until 2017 and potentially beyond, casting serious doubt on its economic credibility, the Telegraph reports.

Meanwhile, the CBI has backed Conservative plans to cut the budget deficit swiftly and sharply, rejecting Gordon Brown's eight-year timetable to reduce the national debt as a "limp" approach that will prolong economic pain. Richard Lambert, director-general of the employers' group, endorsed Tory fiscal policy and welcomed the non-confrontational stance on Europe taken by party leader David Cameron. Mr Lambert stressed the CBI's apolitical nature but his comments mark a significant shift by the business community, the FT reports.

The Government yesterday published details of its draft banking reform Bill which will give the UK's financial watchdog powers to claw back bankers' bonuses, and rip up their employment contracts, if they are deemed to endanger the financial system by encouraging excessive risk-taking. The Financial Services Bill will put into law a number of measures that the Government has already announced and those agreed with the G20 on reforms to the global financial system, the Independent reports.

James Murdoch, anointed heir to his father's media conglomerate, News Corporation, signalled that the family love affair with newspapers is coming to an end and the business will shift its focus to television and entertainment in the future. "Structurally, television is vastly more profitable and a big opportunity," he said reports the Independent.

Nicola Horlick's career as a traditional City fund manager was in effect over last night after her company sold its main management contract to Martin Gilbert's Aberdeen Asset Management for just under £5m. Bramdean Asset Management, founded two years ago by Ms Horlick, sold the contract to manage £175m of assets on behalf of Bramdean Alternatives, a listed vehicle that was at the centre of a shareholder coup earlier this year, the Times reports.

Russian authorities have refused to release the body of Sergei Magnitsky, the lawyer campaigning against fraud and corruption who died in a Moscow jail this week, for an independent autopsy. According to friends, the authorities rejected several requests and are only releasing the body for burial. Mr Magnitsky's funeral will be held at noon today at Moscow's Preobrazhensky cemetery, the Telegraph reports.

European Union leaders on Thursday night awarded two of its top jobs to politicians relatively unknown on the international stage, after almost a decade of wrangling over how to project Europe's global presence. At a Brussels summit the EU picked consensus builders rather than star names, choosing Herman Van Rompuy, Belgium's centre-right prime minister, over Tony Blair as the EU's first full-time president, the FT reports.