Top Ten Retail Investor Buys & Sells for week ending 11 May 2007

Angus Rigby, Chief Executive Officer, TD Waterhouse, commented: Moving away from the story of ABN Amro and RBS, this week there is interest around the £8.76bn takeover bid for the news agency, Reuters, from the Canadian Thomson family. However, the city’s response to this news has been uncharacteristically reticent, with Reuters trading at a near 8 per cent discount on the offer price on Wednesday.

Thursday saw Reuters trading up 0.41 per cent to 614.50p per share, way below the projected offer Thomson made, which would value Reuters at 683.5p per share - comprising 352.5p in cash and Thomson shares worth 331p each. It is suggested by market commentators that the city’s reaction has come as a result of pervading concerns over regulatory approval of the bid, and suggestions that the trust set up to protect the independence of Reuters may not accept the Canadian Thomson family taking over the British company. TD Waterhouse customers trade strongly on Reuters stock this week on the back of this news and it enters our Top 10 Buys and Sells.

Elsewhere, competition for market dominance between no-frills airlines EasyJet and Ryanair continues unabated. EasyJet reported its interim results on Wednesday, with a share price of 605.5p per share, up 1.25 per cent. First-half pre-tax losses in the operator dipped to £17m in the six months to March, compared with £40m last year, whilst revenues rose by 14 per cent to £719m. Prior to the announcement of these results, shares in EasyJet had fallen on Tuesday when it revealed its load factor, the number of passengers as a proportion of the number of seats available, dropped to 83.1 per cent from 86.4 per cent in April. As a result of this and perhaps in response to Ryanair’s reduction in ticket prices, EasyJet reduced its prices in the second half of the year to boost its load factor.

Continuing on the aviation theme, Thursday heralded the announcement of a five year deal between British Airways PLC and aviation services supplier, Go-Ahead Group PLC. Go-Ahead have announced they are taking over BA’s ground handling operations at Aberdeen, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Manchester airports. BA, whose load factors have also dipped in recent months, saw share prices fall 0.61 per cent on Thursday to 490p per share amidst news that the Go-Ahead deal would affect 730 of BA's jobs. Our investors remain undeterred by this and bought into BA stock this week.


Top 10 Buys
1 Royal Bank of Scotland
2 Partygaming
3 Easy Jet
4 BP
5 Barclays
6 Reuters Group
7 Vodafone Group
8 Morrison (W) Supermarket
9 British Airways
10 EMI Group


Top 10 Sells
1 Partygaming
2 Reuters Group
3 BHP Billiton PLC
4 BP
5 Barclays
6 Royal Bank of Scotland
7 Vodafone Group
8 Lloyds TSB Group
9 Prudential
10 Rio Tinto