MARKETS HEAD DOWN AGAIN ON US NEWS - European markets are expected to open lower again today. Yesterday the London and Paris markets closed down more than 1%. The Iseq was down more than 1% with the banks losing share value. Last night on Wall Street the Dow Jones lost 207 points to close at 13,029 while the Nasdaq closed down 43 points at 2,499.
The tumbles came on the back of more bad sub-prime news. Swiss Bank UBS, the world's largest wealth manager, warned that the current turmoil was like to hit its investment banking business in the second half of the year.
Shares in Countrywide Financial Corporation, the largest US mortgage lender, fell more than 8.1% after the company said foreclosures and delinquencies rose in July to their highest level in several years.
Another US financial stock, Sentinel Asset Management which manages assets of $1.6 billion, said it wanted to halt withdrawals to avoid liquidating assets.
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PRICES RIGHT FOR SMURFIT KAPPA - Smurfit Kappa, the paper and packaging group which returned to the stock market in March this year, has produced second quarter figures this morning to the end of June and that gives us a picture of how the company has performed in the first half of the year.
Revenues in the first half of €3.725 billion are up 4% on the same period last year. The pre-tax profit figure came in at €470,000 for the first half of the year compared to losses of almost €50m in the same period in 2006.
The EBITDA figure for the first half - which does not include interest charges on its substantial debt - increased 28.4% to €514m, while in the first six months of this year the company has managed to cut its debt by €1.3 billion to €3.6 billion.
Smurfit Kappa chief executive Gary McGann said the company's performance had come in spite of higher raw materials costs, driven by higher oil prices. He said there was strong demand growth, particularly for recycled containerboard, and this was helping prices.
