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Market movers - RBS, Standard Life, Next, Morison, Solo Oil, Tomco Energy

Published: 19:03 11 Sep 2014 AEST

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The FTSE 100 edged slightly lower on Thursday morning, though Scotland’s independence vote remained the dominant theme in the City and in that regard investors saw some relief.

A new poll, carried out for Scottish paper The Daily Record, showed momentum behind the ‘yes’ vote had stalled - 42.4% of 1,000 people surveyed planned to vote ‘yes’ and 47.6% would vote ‘no’.

At the same time Standard Life (LON:SL.) and Royal Bank of Scotland (LON:RBS) steadied on Thursday morning after they allayed some investor fears over the impact of a ‘yes’ vote in the Scottish independence referendum next week.

The insurance group was the FTSE 100’s top riser in early deals, climbing 2.75% to 418p, whilst RBS was 1.14% higher at 346p.

The former was among the first Edinburgh based financial institutes to publicly reveal plans to leave Scotland should it separate from the rest of the UK – these plans were again confirmed yesterday with chief executive David Nish saying Standard Life would pensions, investments and other long-term savings to a new English company.

RBS responded to speculation that it may too re-domicile by today confirmed it has contingency plans for the possible business implications of a ‘yes’ vote.

The bank which is still majority owned by UK taxpayer (on both sides of the border) said a ‘yes’ vote would create a number of material uncertainties which could impacting upon its business – they include impacts to the bank's credit ratings as well as the fiscal, monetary, legal and regulatory landscape.

It therefore believes it would be necessary to re-domicile RBS’s holding company and its primary rated operating entity, although it said this would not impact on everyday banking services throughout the British Isles.

The bank also said: “The vote on independence is a matter for the Scottish people. Scotland has been RBS's home since 1727. 

“RBS intends to retain a significant level of its operations and employment in Scotland to support its customers there and the activities of the whole bank.”

Next (LON:NXT), the clothes and homeware retailer, was Thursday’s biggest faller among the blue-chips - losing 125p, 1.74%, at £70.40. 

Investors appear to have expected too much of the retailer which today reported sales growth of 7.5% and earnings growth of 22.5% in the first half of 2014. “Next has had a stellar first half, but numbers are a little short of consensus,” Investec analyst Alistair Davies said in a note.

Supermarket group Morrison (LON:MRW), meanwhile, confounded the market – indeed, its shares rose about 0.5% this morning - by raising the interim dividend; however trading was every bit as bad as analysts predicted.

First half profits fell 30% to £239mln, while underlying sales were off 7.4% as the Bradford-based grocer found itself in the middle of price war.

Morrisons is being squeezed from two sides – by its traditional adversaries Tesco, Asda and Sainsburyand it is feeling the pain as discounters such as Aldi and Lidl continue to bite into its market share.

Mining stocks also found themselves in the losers column as weaker than expected Chinese data softened metal prices, with copper particularly weak.

Antofagasta (LON:ANTO) and Anglo American (LON:AAL) were both down 1.2%, while Glencore (LON:GLEN) moved 0.75% lower.

Precious metal miner Fresnillo (LON:FRES), meanwhile, shed 1.5% to 829p per share.

In the small cap market Solo Oil (LON:SOLO) shares climbed more than 12% after its gas resources in Tanzania were upgraded - its project is now estimated to host 2.4 trillion cubic feet (tcf) of in-place gas, up from 1.9tcf.

Aminex (LON:AEX), Solo’s partner and project operator, at the same time gained 16.67%.

Elsewhere, With the submission of documents to the state regulator Tomco Energy (LON:TOM) has reached an important milestone in the Holliday unconventional hydrocarbon project in Utah.

Tomco told investors it has now submitted the final details required by the Utah authorities concerning the company’s intention to commence ‘large mining operations’ (or LMO). It means the authorities are now able to consider making a decision to tentatively approve the LMO and begin a 30 day public consultation.

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