Hanson shares jumped 27p to 677

Hanson shares jumped 27p to 677.5p, while Wolseley, another UK blue chip with significant exposure to the US building industry, added 30p to 1,148p thanks to a positive read-across from Hanson.
It has been a dire week for Man Group’s flagship AHL Diversified Futures Fund, which is heavily invested in the mining industry and produces about 13 per cent of Man’s total group profits. Cemex is worth almost exactly double Hanson’s current market capitalisation, and could sell off some of Hanson’s non-aggregate businesses to ease the pain of a major acquisition. For a fast-growing company such as Omega, a rating of 17 times forward earnings is simply too low.. Persistent bid talk at the start of the year, combined with hopes that the company may demerge its US business, sent Hanson shares up to almost 800p in April.

Since then, the company has played down bid talk, and fears over the stuttering US housing market brought the stock back down to earth. The rumour yesterday was that Cemex, the Mexican cement giant, is once again mulling an offer for Hanson to boost its position in the global aggregates market. The bonus of addressing this market is that Omega’s customers tend to be less susceptible to the ups and downs of the economic cycle, although, of course, not immune.Profits at the company are forecast to hit £6.25m by the end of this year and £8m in 2007. Profits soared 54 per cent to £3.1m while sales gained 20 per cent to £13.5m. Omega’s profit margins came in well ahead of budget and it became the only company on the junior market to pay a special dividend this year. All this leaves the group, which is based in Doncaster, well on course to meeting its target of doubling in size by 2010.An Omega kitchen costs between £6,000 and £20,000 meaning that the group’s target customer is the type of person who shops at John Lewis. Omega International, the manufacturer of kitchens, has certainly over-delivered throughout its two-and-a-half-year history on the Alternative Investment Market.Yesterday’s interim results were no exception They beat City forecasts at every level.

With a healthy dividend yield of 4 per cent, that is too cheap, and the shares deserve a further re-rating.Omega InternationalOur view: BuyShare price: 280p (+32.5p)Under-promise and over-deliver That is the key to success as a publicly listed company. If those numbers are hit, which now looks very likely, the shares still trade on an undemanding multiple of just 11 times, falling to just 8.3 times forecast 2007 earnings. Given the current popularity of its Dr Who, Scooby Doo and Peppa Pig ranges, it ought to be a very merry Christmas. The last quarter normally counts for about 50 per cent of annual sales. A new toy, the Robosapien V2, part of the company’s robotics range, was recently voted the No 1 toy for children in a survey conducted by battery manufacturer, Duracell.The house broker, Charles Stanley, increased its full-year, pre-tax profits forecast to £5m, giving per-share earnings of 6.74p for 2006. For the six months to the end of June, it boasted of a 23 per cent jump in pre-tax profits to £49.7m. This gave it room to reward shareholders with a 17 per cent rise in the interim dividend to 6.3p per share.SIG, which does 95 per cent of its business in the UK and mainland Europe, operates in a consolidating industry.

This is forecast to start to positively impacting SIG and other building materials players some time in the next 12 months and, as last time around, should support higher prices for at least two years.Such conditions will mean that SIG is able to continue to report the kind of strong profit growth it unveiled in its interim results yesterday. Looking ahead, Next said it plans to boost its internet and catalogue offering where recently new product lines have included jewellery and electricals.However, it was a different story at the group’s high street stores. The high-profile meetings of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) were in disarray yesterday after some of the world’s leading charities threatened to pull out of the event in protest at heavy-handed policing by the Singapore government. Oxfam and at least 15 other pressure groups are furious that the authorities have banned 28 activists from entering the country and deported two others The police have also forbidden any public protests.. Norwich Union owner Aviva today said it will cut 4,000 jobs in the UK by 2008. The UK’s biggest insurer said 1,000 jobs will move to India while a further 500 roles in IT will be contracted out.
The move is part of a plan to cut costs and “improve efficiency” at Norwich Union in the UK.