Cosmo Pharma: In the first six months revenues reached EUR 14.3 million, an increase of 7.0% compared to the same period last year, driven principally by a 47.6% increase in royalties, a 12.3% increase in contract drug manufacturing revenues and a 6.8% increase in MMX manufacturing. License fees and milestones were lower since no new contracts were signed during the period. Link: Click Here

Gate Gourmet, a member of gategroup and the world's largest independent provider of catering and provisioning services for airlines and railroads, has transitioned its airline catering, production and provisioning operations in Guayaquil, Ecuador, to a new facility to meet the growing needs of airlines serving the Jose Joaquin de Olmedo International Airport. Link: Click Here

Basilea (SIX:BSLN) announced today that first results from the TOCCATA observational study were presented at the 22nd Fortbildungswoche für praktische Dermatologie und Venerologie in Munich, Germany. TOCCATA was designed to investigate the clinical profile of Toctino® (alitretinoin) under daily practice conditions in severe chronic hand eczema (CHE) patients in Germany. Link: Click Here

Genolier: The Swiss Takeover Board has determined that neither Michael Schröder nor Katrin Reincke-Schröder acted in concert with Alain Fabarez, Lincoln Vale European Partners Master Fund L.P. and Jaime Rosell on the occasion of the general assembly of 9 June 2010 of Genolier Swiss Medical Network SA. Link: Click Here

Sika improves profit and continues to gain market share. Sika grew in all Regions in the first half-year of 2010 in terms adjusted for exchange rates. In emerging markets, double-digit growth rates were achieved throughout. With material costs initially still low and those for personnel reduced, operating profit increased considerably. For the second half-year the company anticipates sustained growth with rising material costs. Link: Click Here

Swissquote's revenues rise again. In the first half of 2010, Swissquote increased overall revenues by 2.5 percent year-on-year to CHF 49.6 million. Compared to the same period in the previous year, operating profit and net profit fell by 13.9 percent on the back of a 14.5 percent increase in operating expenditure. Link: Click Here


Economy
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UK consumer confidence falls further following June's Budget announcements. The latest GfK consumer confidence survey indicated that headline confidence fell by 3 points to -22 in July. This outturn marks the fifth consecutive month that confidence has fallen, and was a slightly larger fall than the consensus had expected (consensus: -20, BarCap: -21). Link: Click Here

Ongoing signs of German labour market improvement. German unemployment fell by 20k in July, the same as in June (and in line with the consensus; BarCap: -13k). While the pace of decrease in the past two months has been lower than in March (-39k), April (-68k) and May (-41k), there were several special factors that had been contributing to the more rapid pace of decline during the spring months, namely, special training schemes and the recovery of the construction sector after the very cold winter. The unemployment rate on the national definition fell to 7.6% from 7.7% in both May and June (and 7.8% in April). Link: Click Here

EC survey shows improvement in confidence, led by Germany. Bottom line: Today's European Commission (EC) survey of euro area business and consumer confidence supports the uptrend discernible in the PMI industrial and service sector data, suggesting that the business and consumer sectors overall have been shrugging off so far the tensions that had emerged in financial markets in recent months. Link: Click Here