Daily Mail, London, market report column [Daily Mail, London]

July 30--Contrary to popular belief, the City is not all about greed and feathering your own nest.

Goldmine Sacks may this year be rewarding its average worker a pay and bonus package of UKpound360,000.

But on the other side of the Square Mile, It's refreshing to hear that loyal staff at stockbroker Peel Hunt have, in some cases, put everything on the line to help buy itself out from its parent, Belgian bank KBC.

It's been a long slog but Peel Hunt yesterday confirmed a UKpound74m buy-out from KBC, which sees most of its 136 staff become shareholders and owning 75pc of the equity.

The other 25pc has been taken up by 10 wealthy individuals, including the UK managing director of Insurance Australia Group, Neil Utley.

The firm will retain the name of Peel Hunt and continue as a stockbroking and advisory firm catering to the small and mid cap market. It makes markets in 1,600 stocks and will continue to give big rival Winterfloods a run for their money.

Managing director Steven Fine added: It's back-to-basics, old fashioned broking with a new fashioned approach. Owning the business is the best way of doing this.

The City should be delighted, as will Charlie Peel. He co-founded the business with Christopher Holdsworth-Hunt in 1989 and sold out to KBC for a stonking UKpound265m at the top of the bull market in 2000.

Shareholders of online gaming group PartyGaming struck it rich as the shares zoomed to 333p before closing 52.5p, or 20.4pc, up at 308.7p.

It followed news of its reverse takeover of Austria's bwin which will create a UKpound2.1bn giant ready to profit from any deregulation of the US market. 888 Holdings jumped 4p to 50.5p and Sportingbet 5.75p to 62p in sympathy.

The Footsie lost an initial 56 point gain to finish 5.73 points off at 5,313.95. Early buying on the back of bullish trading statements from several major companies gave way to profit-taking when Wall Street traded all over the place at the outset.

Up 68 points following excellent quarterly figures from oil giant Exxon Mobil, the Street of Dreams was 20 points lower soon after.

AstraZeneca was chased up to 3,376p before closing 86.5p better at 3,289.5p after reporting strong quarterly earnings and hearing that the US Food & Drug Administration had given US marketing approval to its blood thinning drug, Brilinta. Buying ahead of next month's interims and continuing speculation about possible imminent board changes helped insurance giant Prudential put on 9.5p to 561.5p.

British Airways descended 4p to 218.03p ahead of today's first-quarter figures, which are expected to be awful.

They will reveal the full impact of the disruption to European airspace from the volcanic ash cloud in April and the cabin crew strikes in May and June.

Recently the subject of private equity takeover talk, electronics group Laird advanced 10.3p to 120p following slightly better-than-expected interim results.

Broker JP Morgan Cazenove said the results are perhaps the first indication that Laird may be turning the corner following the severe downturn in its markets and loss of share with Nokia.

Petrofac lost 14p to 1274p despite being awarded a joint UKpound1.2bn contract with Hyundai Engineering from the Kuwait Oil Company. Petrofac's part of the deal is to build gas pipelines plus a pumping station from the Mina al-Ahmadi refinery to al-Zour and Shuaiba power stations, due for completion by July 2012.

Centamin Egypt eased 2p to 151.2p after reporting gold production for the June quarter at 30,236 ounces, slightly below analysts' expectations of 33,000 ounces.

The company retained its full-year guidance of 200,000 ounces. Oriel Securities target price is 204p.

Profit-taking developed when shares of PetroNeft Resources jumped to 47p on an operating update and the close was 7p or 17pc down at 35p.

PetroNeft announced its first commercial oil production from its Linenoye field in Russia would commence in late-August and that its fifth and sixth production wells had been successfully drilled.

Chamberlin, the 120 year-old foundry and engineering group, rose 6.5p to 88.5p following a positive trading statement.

Biotech firm Antisoma edged up 0.24p to 5.73p following in-line full-year results. Peel Hunt's target price is 33p.

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