StanChart sailed through the crisis but that doesn’t mean it will always find it easy

What's in a name? Peter Hambro, scion of one of Europe's oldest banking families, changed the name of his gold miner to Petropavlovsk in September 2009. Since then the shares have fallen more than 70 per cent.

Flogging cheap clothes has been keeping punters in Primark owner Associated British Foods happy, but City scribblers think the shares are no longer quite so sweet. The Primark to Twinings tea group could be facing bitter times at its European sugar business.

Shares in the London Stock Exchange celebrated their imminent promotion into the blue-chip index by reaching a five-year high. The group, which is set to finalise the detail of its £366m deal to buy 60 per cent of the clearing house LCH Clearnet tomorrow, saw its shares jump 27p to 1,371p.

The already shaky high street was dealt a fresh blow yesterday as UBS downgraded the entire European retail sector in a note titled "Running out of steam". Analysts said that while the markets are rallying, it means it's harder for retailers to outperform.

The City's best-known activist investor is keeping Simon Borrows' 3i Group guessing as it upped its stake again yesterday in the private-equity group.

A 23-page trading update from Kazakhmys contained a mine of information, but the burning question that every City trader wanted to know was left unanswered. What will happen with Kazakhmys's stake in rival miner Eurasian Natural Resources Corporation?

The billionaire investor Carl Icahn will be sharing a spot on the share register of a Brazilian miner with Glencore. The world's largest commodities trader is hoping to grasp a share of the lucrative iron-ore market to add to its hold on the tradeable zinc, copper, grain and oil sectors, and has bought a holding in Ferrous Resources. Reports suggest it has offered funding to help develop the Viga mine in exchange for a bigger stake in the group.

Amid turmoil on the equity markets, gold miners were seen to be nearly as safe as the gold they dig up. There was a sea of red across traders' screens as the market was spooked by the Italian government election deadlock but the gold price ticked up, and gold miners Randgold Resources and Centamin glistened as the second-best risers in the benchmark and mid-cap index respectively.

Online gambling company 888 looks like a good bet, says Numis, which reckons the company is poised to win big in America. Nevada's governor has legalised online gambling in the state, home to America's gambling capital Las Vegas, and Numis's Ivor Jones reckons other states will follow suit.

A deal between the owner of basketball team Brooklyn Nets and two Russian retail and fruit juice tycoons yesterday got the City speculating that a $17bn (£11bn) miner could be created in the wake of the sale.