Tuesday morning business bulletin

Oct 7 2008 By Karen Dent

The FTSE 100 Index today opened higher after yesterday’s stock market panic wiped £93bn from the value of London’s leading shares.

Traders said a late rally on Wall Street and a bigger-than-expected cut in Australian interest rates offered some respite for beleaguered investors.

In a dramatic session yesterday, the Footsie slumped 7.8% - its largest one-day percentage decline since the aftermath of Black Monday in October 1987. It recovered around 2.6% or 120 points of last night’s 391.1 points fall when the London market reopened today.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down more than 800 points at one point last night, but recovered in the final 90 minutes of the session to finish down 370 points at 9,955.50 - still its first close below 10,000 since 2004.

Retail boss Sir Philip Green described trading as "competitive and unpredictable" today after sales at his Bhs chain fell 4% in the past six weeks.

The update came as Sir Philip reported a 39.6% fall in Bhs’s operating profits to £30.2m for the year to March 29.

He denied himself a Bhs dividend payout for the fourth year in a row. Sir Philip famously paid himself a £1.2bn dividend from his Topshop-to-Burton Arcadia clothing empire in 2005.

The chain’s sales for the full year were 1.4% lower at £860.3m, with like-for-like sales down 2.9%.

Sir Philip said the group achieved a "solid performance in an exceptionally challenging market", adding that the results had enabled Bhs to invest £50m in capital spending in the last financial year.

Northern Foods today said revenues at its Fox’s bakery division jumped by 6.7% after an advertising campaign became an online hit.

The group’s cartoon character Vinnie - a cross between a panda and a dog - was launched last April as part of a relaunch for the Fox’s biscuit brand.

And Northern Foods said it was now planning a second series of Vinnie ads to further boost the brand in the run up to Christmas.

Northern, which makes Goodfella’s pizza and supplies products to Marks & Spencer, moved to reassure today ahead of its interim results that it was continuing to fully recover soaring input costs through price increases.

It has upped its selling prices by 5.6% on average, which had offset a 1.7% drop in sales volumes.

The pound at 8am was US1.7536 compared to US1.7389 at the previous close, while the euro at 8am was £0.7751 compared to £0.7774 at the previous close.