UK technology to combine with Russian manufacturing power

An encouraging sign of the continued demands for international cooperation has come with the news that high tech UK automotive engineering company will be pooling their talents and energies linked with one of Russia’s premier carmaker to develop a new petrol engine.

The UK Company, Ricardo, based in Leamington will bring their innovative technology and design skills to the production floor of JSC AvtoVAZ, makers of the Lada car, of which 800,000 flow through their doors every year, making the company one of the key players in the Russian auto industry.

A company spokesman announced that Ricardo is expanding rapidly into the Russian market, where their talents in increasing fuel economy whilst reducing emissions are in very high demand.

AvtoVAZ, partially owned by Renault, controls almost three quarters of the country’s domestic car production.

On the medicine front, international conglomerates GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) and Pfizer recently confirmed their plans to centralise their HIV drugs businesses in London, with the new division focusing on n research and development of innovative HIV treatments.

GSK predict that the new division, to be 85% owned by GSK and 15% by Pfizer will eventually hold a 19% share of the market with combined sales of around £1.6 billion.

On the FTSE equities were running strong on Thursday, with banks and mining stocks once more driving the FTSE 100 over the 4,000-points mark. The banking scene was again the place to be as investors basked in the shade of the considerably stronger than forecast first quarter earnings announced by JP Morgan.

Shares in Barclays did well rising by 7.7 percent (15 pence to 212) while Lloyds also jumped by 6.7 percent (9 pence to 89.7)

Other where on the market there were ups and downs. Engineering software writer Areva announced that they expected a decline in revenue of as much as 40% and would be making job cuts accordingly. Understandably their share value dropped by 2.1 percent (12 pence to 577).

Furniture retailing group DFS, had their annual pre-tax profit fall by almost a quarter in the year ending August 2008, with the blow sweetened by their turnover holding its head above water despite worsening economic conditions.

Pre-tax profit for the period fell 24 per cent, from £46.8million to £35million. Turnover dropped by less than 2% however, from £611.1m to £594.9m

The FSTE 100 ended the day’s session up 85 points to 4,052.98, a rise of 2.1 per cent, while the mid-cap FTSE 250 was 1.6 per cent higher at 7,224.76, an advance of 115 points.

Sterling held gains versus the dollar on Tuesday whilst at the same time hitting a five-week high against the euro. The pound is apparently being supported by increasing domestic share prices.

Pound/US dollar 1.4801
Pound/Euro 1.1320
Pound/Japanese Yen 146.97

Pound/Swiss Franc 1.7209
In Europe, the rapid pace of the eurozone’s economic contraction shows few signs of slowing, with the 16-country region announcing an 18.4 per cent production fall in the last quarter, the largest since 1990

In the US, shares had another good day on trading

The Dow Jones Average rose 95.81 points. To close at 8125.43. Nasdaq jumped an encouraging 43.64 points to close the day at 1670.44

Wall Street was jumping with the news that US bank group JP Morgan Chase have come in with first-quarter profits well ahead of expectations, despite dropping 12.5% from a year ago to £1.41 billion ($2.1billion).

Their forecast beating results sent their share values up 2.6% as the bank announced their intentions to repay the government aid received in October 2009.

Forever bucking the trend is Google, the internet search engine, who announced strong results for the first three quarter of 2009.

Google’s net profit for the quarter came to £0.95bn ($1.42bn), an increase of 9% compared from the previous year, from revenues of $5.51bn. Revenues were 6% higher than from the same period in 2008 but showed a decrease of 3% from the last quarter 0f 2008.

Despite that, Google’s results were better than many analysts had expected taking into the general downturn in advertising spending.

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Tags: Economics, Employment, Financial News, Money Markets