BP chief Bob Dudley must be hopping mad. ExxonMobil’s Arctic exploration deal with Russia’s Rosneft is the deal that Britain’s biggest oil company was in the end unable to consummate.

 

After the Macondo pipeline disaster, which may yet cost BP $40 billion (£25 billion), this is another strategic body blow to its exploration ambitions.

 

Every picture is worth a thousand words. Johnston Press's 99% share price fall in five years tells us most of what we need to know about the dire state of the UK regional press.

 

When it came to the London market in May, Glencore was the biggest-ever UK initial public offering with a market value of £36 billion at the 530p offer price. Combining a whole range of mining and commodity trading activities, the company was supposed to be worth more as a multiple of profits than the pure play hole-in-the-ground boys like BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto.

 

Results this week were pretty decent as expected. Glencore  increased half year operating earnings by a half, but nearly two thirds of the money was made from mining.

 

Ever since Steve Jobs announced in January that he was taking medical leave from his role as Apple chief executive, investors in the company he founded and nurtured to technological stardom have been dreading the day when he was no longer able to keep hold of the reins.

 

That day came yesterday, after Wall St closed. Though there was no detail about the state of Jobs' health, his decision to give up his role as CEO was enough to see Apple ’s shares fall 5% in after-hours trading.

 

Investors have discovered patents. It’s a surprise they took so long.

 

While those digging for value were always aware of the power of other kinds of intellectual property -- the ownership of Harry Potter copyright, rights to the music of Adele or to the top-selling computer game Kinect Adventures – the power of patents in electronics has always seemed to be a side issue, of real interest only to lawyers and geeks.

 

Norway’s Statoil has recently discovered a huge North Sea oil field with at least 500 million barrels, and possibly up to 1.2 billion. That’s the biggest field to be discovered in Norwegian waters since the 1980s.

 

It wasn’t by any means a frontier find. Statoil has of course been looking ever further north, right into Arctic waters, and in deeper and more geologically challenging areas to make up for dwindling production.

 

But this was different.

 

Statoil drilled in just 100 metres of water, on Norway's own continental shelf, between two existing producing fields and less than 100 miles offshore. With much infrastructure nearby it will be cheap to produce and with current prices, very profitable.

 

 Lacklustre German GDP figures on Tuesday have hit shares across Europe, leaving some of the continent’s biggest and most solid companies looking dirt cheap. While investors may be wary of double-dip recession, there are many stocks with solid resource fundamentals or with good Asian-facing export markets that are too cheap for the enduring prospects they have.  

 

 What have all the following got in common? London house prices, restaurant table availability in the capital, and orders for City dealing desks.  

 

That’s right, they all depend on the number and prosperity of City bankers. Try not to cry, but there will soon be fewer of them.