Headline shares made firm progress in midday trade, on another busy day for corporate reports, with upbeat earnings news driving blue chips higher, helped by the prospect of a positive start on Wall Street. At high noon, the FTSE100 was up 32.99 points at 5,619.6 with the FTSE250 ahead 48.4 points at 10,347.4 and the FTSE Smallcaps 2.71 points better at 2,951.89. US stock futures gained as investors continued to enjoy the Fed decision to keep interest rates low.  Dow Jones Industrial Average futures added 16 points at 11,031, S&P500 futures rose 3 points at 1,193.1 and Nasdaq 100 improved 4 points at 2,010.75.

LONDON MARKETS

The spread of doubt over European debt created a sense of caution in financial markets, now that Spain has joined Greece and Portugal in having its rating cut by S&P. However, in London upbeat earnings news raised spirits and foreign currency markets bore the brunt of the downforce. Earnings news drove the blue chip leaders at midday, with satellite broadcaster BSkyB taking top spot on the leaderboard after reporting a rise of 62,000 in subscribers to reach 9.77m households, with 1.9m taking all three of TV, broadband and telephony, up 39%. Sky shares jumped 30p at 626p in response.

Household goods conglomerate Unilever (LON:ULVR) also made strong progress on the back of earnings news, up 73p at 1,989p. The group said underlying volume growth in the first quarter was 7.6%, while underlying sales growth accelerated to 4.1%. Rival Reckitt Benckiser Group Plc (LON:RB.) ticked up 12p at 3,443p on the read across.

Aerospace engineering group Cobham (LON:COB) added 1.3p at 265.5p after announcing £12m of MoD contract wins. Pharmaceutical group Astrazeneca (LON:AZN) gained 58p at 2,895.5p after raising its guidance for the year on the back of a 17% leap in pretax profits for the first-quarter to $3.519bn. Peer Shire (LON:SHP) rose 9p at 1,471p after saying it was optimistic on earnings growth for the full year, while Glaxosmithkline (LON:GSK) added 8.5p at 1,225.5p on the read across.

Mining stocks put in a mostly positive performance, with Kazakhmys (LON:KAZ) gaining 37p at 1,416p after an encouraging production update. ENRC rose 34p at 1,235p, Rangold Resources added 135p at 5,465p as gold ticked up to $1,168 an ounce, and Anglo American (LON:AAL) jumped 25p at 2,832.5p. Oil and gas…

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