Shell bucks the trend as Footsie struggles
Oil giant Shell avoided being caught in the crossfire of some heavy selling in London today by smashing consensus expectations for third-quarter profits.
Shell was among just seven stocks to make it into positive territory on a day when the majority of blue-chip firms updating the market failed to impress.
Insurance giant Aviva and media firm Reuters were among firms whose results were given a bad reception as the FTSE 100 Index dropped 48.5 points to 5179.3 by mid-morning.
If there is no improvement during the rest of the day then the Footsie will have lost all the gains racked up in the previous session. Little support is set to come from Wall Street where the Dow Jones Industrial Average is tipped to open in the red.
Shell advanced 14p to 1791p after making profits of around 7.37 billion US dollars (£4.13bn) in the third quarter, higher than BP earlier in the week.
Although this was inflated by gains on the sale of some pipelines, analysts said the underlying figure was still around 10% ahead of expectations.
However, the rest of the oil and gas sector was in negative territory with BP down 10p at 616.5p, Cairn Energy off 34p at 1691p and BG Group losing 11p at 497p.
British American Tobacco resisted the sell-off early on after saying it was heading for a highly satisfactory year, with volumes of its top four brands up 9% in the first nine months of this year. But it soon became a victim of the slump in sentiment, standing 8p lower at 1187p.
Insurance giant Aviva fell 8p to 645.5p after new business sales of life and pensions products totalled £16.26 billion in the first nine months of this year - at the bottom of the range forecast by the City.
The heaviest faller was Reuters – down 5% or 17.5p at 348.75p – following an uninspiring update, which included an 8% rise in revenues over the summer to £611 million.
