London close: Gains erased as Spanish yields advance - Life Style Extra
- Newsflow improves in Greece; New Democracy support increases
- Spanish concerns weigh on sentiment
London blue chips finished broadly flat on Monday as the initial optimism surrounding the Greek elections was outweighed in afternoon trade by ongoing concerns about Spain's finances.
Several opinion polls published this weekend showed the pro-bailout party New Democracy as the favourite to win the elections in Greece on June 17th. Specifically, five separate polls show New Democracy leading by a margin of 0.5 to 5.7 points. This would put the group ahead of the radical left wing Syriza party that opposes the terms of the second bailout signed with the "troika" (name given to the combination of the EU, the IMF and the ECB).
"The lead is only slim and could change before the elections on June 17th however this is looking very good for the Eurozone as it shows that Tsipras' promises of rejecting austerity while staying in the euro are starting the wear thin with the Greek public and with around 85% opposed to leaving the euro we could see New Democracy's lead grow," said Alpari analyst Craig Erlam.
However, concerns about Spain were also in focus today after the government was asked for 19bn in aid from troubled financial institution Bankia in order to strengthen its solvency. Rumours of further re-capitalisations across the sector were also doing the rounds. The yield on a Spanish 10-year bond jumped 16.8 basis points to 6.479% today. The STOXX Europe 600 Banks index finished 1.08% lower.
Equity markets are closed in Austria, Denmark, Hungary, Norway, Switzerland and the US today for a bank holiday.
FTSE 100: IAG flying low, BP drops on TNK-BP CEO resignation
Shares in British Airways parent International Airlines Group (IAG) fell after the president of Bankia (which holds a 12% interest in IAG) said the bank would sell assets to raise much needed funds. There were also reports that Madrid will look to privatise stakes in some state companies, which would include selling its stakes in companies such as IAG.
The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Russia's third-largest oil producer, TNK-BP, resigned today, with sources citing a breakdown in the relationship between BP and its joint venture partner, AAR. Fridman's resignation "represents a further breakdown in the relationship between TNK-BP's shareholders," one source close to AAR was reported to have said on Monday, adding that AAR has lost trust in the British firm. BP's shares were down nearly 2% by the close.
Retailers were firmly out of favour today with Kingfisher, Tesco and Sainsbury among the worst performers.
Heading the other way were miners with copper giants Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton tracking tracking copper prices higher on the back of falling stockpiles in China and favourable comments by Citigroup; Citi analyst Heath Jansen this morning adjusted his short-term view on the copper industry from bearish to neutral.
Outsourcing group Capita was on the up after UBS upgraded the stock from neutral to buy on the back of improving trading momentum combined with a depressed valuation. Aggreko was also benefitting from an upgrade from AlphaValue from sell to add.
FTSE 250: AVEVA jumps after full-year results
Engineering software company AVEVA surged on the second-tier index after it reported record profits for the 12 months ended March 21st as the firm capitalised on growing demand from deep-water oil and gas exploration. ??
Satellite group Inmarsat rose strongly after Jefferies upgraded its rating on the stock from hold to buy, saying that it now has greater visibility on the issues cited behind the August 2011 profit warning.
FTSE 100 - Risers
Weir Group (WEIR) 1,614.00p +3.99%
ITV (ITV) 78.95p +3.07%
Xstrata (XTA) 939.80p +2.98%
Capita (CPI) 629.00p +2.95%
Tullow Oil (TLW) 1,432.00p +2.65%
Rio Tinto (RIO) 2,857.50p +2.24%
Whitbread (WTB) 1,860.00p +2.14%
Burberry Group (BRBY) 1,401.00p +2.11%
ARM Holdings (ARM) 501.50p +2.10%
Rexam (REX) 400.70p +2.09%
FTSE 100 - Fallers
International Consolidated Airlines Group SA (CDI) (IAG) 137.10p -2.70%
BP (BP.) 399.70p -1.88%
Kingfisher (KGF) 274.90p -1.79%
Tesco (TSCO) 304.50p -1.63%
Resolution Ltd. (RSL) 199.50p -1.43%
Severn Trent (SVT) 1,680.00p -1.23%
British Sky Broadcasting Group (BSY) 691.50p -1.07%
Petrofac Ltd. (PFC) 1,562.00p -0.95%
National Grid (NG.) 678.50p -0.88%
SSE (SSE) 1,348.00p -0.81%
FTSE 250 - Risers
Aveva Group (AVV) 1,638.00p +10.60%
Cape (CIU) 225.70p +10.10%
Aquarius Platinum Ltd. (AQP) 74.00p +8.74%
Dixons Retail (DXNS) 14.97p +7.01%
Ruspetro (RPO) 157.10p +5.72%
Ashtead Group (AHT) 231.40p +5.57%
Renishaw (RSW) 1,422.00p +5.18%
Ferrexpo (FXPO) 216.20p +4.75%
Genus (GNS) 1,247.00p +4.61%
Perform Group (PER) 345.10p +4.58%
FTSE 250 - Fallers
Essar Energy (ESSR) 109.00p -4.89%
Dunelm Group (DNLM) 486.50p -3.66%
PayPoint (PAY) 606.00p -2.26%
Heritage Oil (HOIL) 120.60p -1.71%
Beazley (BEZ) 135.00p -1.68%
Britvic (BVIC) 340.80p -1.50%
Computacenter (CCC) 353.00p -1.34%
Cranswick (CWK) 800.00p -1.23%
Cable & Wireless Communications (CWC) 31.13p -1.17%
ITE Group (ITE) 195.00p -1.02%
BC
London 2012: Chris Adcock & Imogen Bankier set for GB call - BBC News
When Imogen Bankier and Chris Adcock won an unexpected mixed doubles silver medal at the World Championships last August, they had only been playing together for 10 months.
They became the top British pair in the world rankings soon after and have never looked back.
The duo now sit in prime position to reach their first Olympics when the squad is named on Wednesday, at the expense of three-time Olympian Nathan Robertson and his girlfriend and playing partner Jenny Wallwork.
Peter Jeffrey Adcock & Bankier's coach“I'm not like a dictator, we work closely as a three. They will have input, I will have input and then we will agree a plan. We haven't yet come across something where it's failed”
While most elite athletes would argue that luck has nothing to do with their success, in Adcock and Bankier's case, it does.
Adcock originally played alongside his fiancee Gabby White, but it was decided by the Olympic coaches that her style would be better suited to Robert Blair and they would stand more chance of qualifying for the London Olympics.
As it happens, it was the pairing of Adcock and Bankier that proved to be the better combination, defeating reigning Olympic champions and top seeds throughout the last 19 months.
"Chris and Imogen are very confident," British Badminton coach Peter Jeffrey, who has tutored the duo since their inception, told BBC Sport.
"The World Championships result enforced their self-belief and now they know they can achieve big things in badminton. They're learning all the time."
As effortless as it seems now, with the Anglo-Scot pair placed at a career-best 10th in the world rankings, they have had to graft. Only two other pairs in the world's top 10 have played more than Adcock and Bankier's 19 tournaments this season.
"It's never going to be smooth with so many competitions. You can't perform in every one even though you want to," said Jeffrey.
"There's definitely been moments where they've lost matches they thought they should have won.
"At the beginning of the qualification process, in June last year, we went to Singapore and Indonesia and they lost in the first round of both tournaments.
"So it wasn't a great start for them.
"We just needed to work hard on certain areas and improve the consistency."
Keys to success
"Having such a massive milestone like the Olympics on the horizon has really focused us both. It feels like there's a sense of urgency about our development as a pair. Because we're so focused on the Olympics, it feels like we're trying to make every day count. Our styles as badminton players are very compatible. We play quite an attacking style. Chris has some good angles at the back, he's quick and covers the court well. I work hard to try and get the attack for him. We have good on-court chemistry, we have a bit of a laugh and a giggle."
Imogen Bankier
Putting the pair together might have been lucky, but once the partnership flourished and started performing against the world's best, how do you keep that momentum going?
"That's the million dollar question," said Jeffrey. "There's different parts of it - the approach, the mental side, working on technique so it doesn't break down under pressure.
"Chris and Imogen get on very well off court and they did a lot of work with the psychologist on how to get the best out of that on court.
"Chris is a very fast and attacking player, and very powerful in the rear court. Imogen is a full-out front-court player and, as well as finishing off opportunities Chris creates in the rear, she can also gain the attack with her net play."
As important as it is for Adcock and Bankier to gel on court, cohesion between players and coach is just as important, as 2004 Olympic silver medallist Robertson found to his detriment this year.
"I'm not like a dictator, we work closely as a three," said Jeffrey. "They will have input, I will have input and then we will agree a plan. I will lead that plan going forward and then drive them forward in achieving it.
"We would work on something, it improves, and then we re-analyse where we are and then choose another thing to work on. We haven't yet come across something where it's failed."
London: Barging in on the Thames - Daily Telegraph
“It’s brilliant,” agreed Peter, the yard owner, throwing her into a handbrake turn – or as near as you can get with a 45ft narrow boat in a canal – while dispensing startlingly cursory driving instructions. “But it’s terrifying.” He lowered his voice and we craned forward. “The gates swing open at Limehouse and there you are, out on the open river,” he said. “Just one of those Thames rubbish barges can put up an 8ft wave if the wind’s the wrong way.”
How those words haunted my friend Sarah and I. They niggled as we chugged merrily into the afternoon sun, crashed into our first lock, wound the paddles up, wound them down, wound them up again – uncertainly – and ricocheted through the dripping gates, going from Emma’s base at Broxbourne in Hertfordshire down the River Lee Navigation to London. This was the first leg of the London Ring; not a sewer or a water main, but a seven-day, 65-mile waterborne circuit of the capital via the Lee, three canals and the River Thames.
They niggled as we stopped to find King Harold’s memorial stone at Waltham Abbey, placed there by his mistress Edith Swan-Neck, and as we tied up at Enfield, where the rifles – and motorcycles – came from (arms and ammunition being a theme on the Lee). The Royal Gunpowder Mills up near the Abbey mark the start of a pyrotechnic trail leading down into the East End – considered far enough away from central London to avoid killing anyone important if they blew.
“Hey, do you want to learn to drive?” I shouted down the hatch. There was a pause followed by some assiduous clattering from the galley. “Tomorrow’s fine!” called Sarah airily. The First Mate – easily press-ganged because she had never tackled a lock so had no idea how tiring they are – had brought baking tins and casserole dishes for all the cooking she was planning to do as we breezed along. “It’s really well stocked,” her voice floated up. “I’m surprised.”
There is something fine about your first night at sea. Even if it’s Enfield. Dusk falls and you are alone with the rustling of wildlife, the slap of water and the sudden, involuntary honks of Canada geese, sounding as if somebody has trodden on a bagpipe.
We didn’t sleep well.
In the morning I was in the bathroom, contact lens balanced on one finger, when the engine started. Odd. There was a lurch. We started moving. Then a shriek rent the air. “QUICK! QUICK! GET UP HERE NOW!”
I’ll draw a veil over the next bit. The mutiny ended as quickly as it had begun; the First Mate resigned from driving duties in perpetuity. “I just thought I’d have a go,” she explained plaintively. “From now on, I’m the Rope Monkey. I’ll do the locks.”
Emma chuntered along, passing swans on volcanic nests of reeds, spidery rowing eights, factories, warehouses and a No 20 bus bouncing along the towpath to the Arriva depot. Stoke Newington’s church spire appeared, then a few bends, then a giant cake of lacy white steel: the 2012 Olympic stadium.
Boats make the perfect base: you can get off and walk, invite people on for a meal, take your children and the dog to London for a fraction of the price of a hotel. We moored at Formans, the oldest salmon smokery in the East End, which was holding an art exhibition. On the towpath we bumped into a postman called Pat – “I’ve heard all the jokes” – who took us to the 2012 site and the Byzantine marvel of the 1868 Abbey Mills Pumping Station, the “Cathedral of Sewage”. Further on at House Mill – a labyrinth of hoppers, funnels and stones that ground grain for gin, among other things – a Bow native nodded at the murky canal. “We just jumped in as kids,” he marvelled. “A chap in that hut there used to give us the needle when we got out. Tetanus.”
From this lost industrial past, the sunless, ramrod-straight Limehouse Cut runs across the top of the Isle of Dogs, debouching into a clinking, sun-dappled world. Limehouse Basin, once home to London’s original Chinatown, opium dens and working river traffic, now harbours several zillion pounds’ worth of yachts. Clearly touch parking was not an option here. We rang the lock-keepers in a panic. “Hello Emma!” they said, soothingly, coaxing us into the right mooring; it turned out they had seen our eccentric progress from their control tower by the lock.
Time was when you couldn’t go up the Thames without a pilot on board. Now a rookie can tackle the great river, if appropriately armed with a VHF radio tuned to the Vessel Traffic Service, a briefing from the Limehouse lock-keepers and British Waterways’ London Tideway Handbook, which explains the bridges, warning lights and sound signals (boop boop boop boop boop!, for example, means a curt “I do not understand your intentions! Keep clear”).
The next morning Emma refused to start. We rang the lock-keepers in a panic.
“Did you touch that?” asked the head lock-keeper, pointing into the engine.
“Yes!” I said, hyperventilating, “Oil check.”
“Ah. It’s the battery switch.”
Engines restored, we plunged to river level in the mighty lock. The electric gates swung open and Emma, with a strident “We’re coming out” signal (BOOOOOP!) turned west, straight into the path of a killer barge. It ignored us.
We chugged under the middle of Tower Bridge on a zinging blue day, past the Tate Modern and the London Eye and were duly boarded by the police near the 230ft Houses of Parliament exclusion zone (“Cup of tea, officer?” said the Rope Monkey sweetly). The sun came out, the wind was in our hair. It was brilliant. Not terrifying. Just brilliant.
It took three hours to reach Brentford and after the excitement of the Thames, the Grand Union Canal seemed drably light-industrial, enlivened only by the Hanwell Flight – six graceful 18th‑century locks that raised us 53ft in a third of a mile – and Brunel’s triple bridge.
The plant life on the canal floor began to photosynthesise in the spring sunshine, releasing carbon dioxide and with it hundreds of plastic bags. Time after time we had to cut the engine to plunge our hands into the water and free the propeller of barbecue charcoal sacks and strands of plastic – much sought after by the coots, who tucked them into their nests.
Things picked up in the north. Friends joined us for the run through London Zoo and the 960yd dark ride of the Islington Tunnel. Japanese tourists snapped away madly as Sarah wielded her windlass at Camden Lock. We moored at Paddington Basin, near Thomas Heatherwick’s trendy rolling bridge, in a cityscape of offices and piazzas reminiscent of Seattle; there were the new arts centre at Kings Place, the sweetly old-fashioned Regent’s Canal Museum in an old ice depot and new canal buddies to find on their mooring.
The loop was almost complete. The East End reappeared, we hopped off at Broadway Market’s gloriously tiled pie and mash shop, envied the houses facing Victoria Park on the Hertford Union Canal, admired the lean runners and cyclists pounding the tow paths and … “Skip!” called Sarah, peering over the lock gate, windlass dangling, “You might want to have a look at this.”
There was no water ahead. A heron picked its way through the mud. Two men stood on their canalside balcony to sympathise. “It was OK last night,” they said. “It’s gone down really fast.” The Hertford Union Canal, it turned out, suffered from leaky lock. So we doubled back to Limehouse Basin and started the long run back to Broxbourne, past the familiar landmarks, spending the night at Waltham Abbey and just squeaking in for the next day’s 9.30am deadline.
For some time afterwards terra firma rocked slightly. The Rope Monkey had done more than 50 locks; she enjoyed it but wouldn’t do it again. I think she secretly regrets not having another go at driving. I would take Emma for longer and have more pottering time. I would also read the instruction manual on day one, instead of the last day, when it emerged from under a pile of unused baking tins and revealed information that frightened us to death.
See? Terrifying. But brilliant.
Barge basics
Lee Valley Boat Centre, Broxbourne, Hertfordshire (01992 462085; www.leevalleyboats.co.uk); weekly prices from £600 for a three-berth (one double and a single) boat such as Emma, including fuel and canal licence. From June 16-September 8 Summer Saver prices start from £530 per week. VHF radio hire is £25, plus refundable £25 deposit.
We used the excellent British Waterways website to download maps and information (www.waterscape.com).
Also see: Waltham Abbey (www.walthamabbeychurch.co.uk); Royal Gunpowder Mills (www.royalgunpowdermills.com); Formans Salmon Smokery (www.formans.co.uk); Olympic site (www.london2012.com); House Mill (www.housemill.org.uk); King’s Place (www.kingsplace.co.uk); and London Canal Museum (www.canalmuseum.org.uk).
Other city routes
Hoseasons (www.hoseasons.co.uk) has narrow boat trips on the Forth and Clyde and Union canals, linking Edinburgh and Glasgow and including the Falkirk Wheel.
Canal Holidays (01756 706521; www.canalholidays.com) feature Chester, Oxford and Bath by narrow boat; seven nights in Bath area from £1,225.
Boating Europe (0845 226 2465; www.boatingeurope.com) offers either Dutch-style barge trips to Amsterdam from £1,350 per week (sleeps four), or cruisers in Bruges from £1,170 (sleeps four), plus damage waiver and fuel.
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