Market Round Up: Investec says Carnival is set to weather Concordia storm

Punters have been shunning the world's largest cruise company since the tragedy with fears that it will put off future passengers from taking to the high seas.

Yet today these concerns were being attacked as overblown, as Investec claimed the financial effects from the crash were "irrelevant beyond the short term".

Taking their first look at Carnival, analysts from the broker decided it was a buy and gave the group a target price of 2500p, higher than before the incident. "We do not expect the Concordia grounding to damage the reputation and bookings resilience of Carnival beyond the current 'wave' period," they said, calculating that, with the group set to receive around $510 million from insurance, there will be "a negative cash impact of $150 million".

Investors were a bit more wary about climbing back on board, however, although Carnival did move up 12p to 1988.5p. Traders were pointing out that, as with BP and the Gulf of Mexico disaster, the key issue remains the potential for fines, saying further clarification on this will be needed before the pressure on the group can be lifted.

With more demands being made of Greece despite the country's politicians reaching an austerity deal last night, the FTSE 100 retreated 16.08 points to 5879.39. It was yet another uncertain day at the end of an indecisive week in which the benchmark index's highest and lowest closing levels have been a mere 20 points apart.

Despite dipping initially, Barclays ended up clear at the top of the benchmark index after its full-year results, jumping 11.4p to 244.4p, a seven-month high. Lloyds was not too far behind, ticking up 0.23p to 35.80p, although Royal Bank of Scotland crept back 0.04p to 28.77p.

The ongoing deleveraging and restructuring among the global banks was being picked out by Goldman Sachs' analysts as a reason to be bearish on the interdealer brokers. They removed their buy rating on Michael Spencer's broking giant ICAP and it slipped 14.5p to 3663.95p in response. Also in the red was Aviva following reports that the ongoing issues with Taiwanese regulators mean the insurer has put the brakes on plans to get rid of the majority of its stake in its disappointing joint venture in the country. The shares dropped 6.8p to 363.1p.

Insurer Phoenix was proving rather resilient on the FTSE 250 after announcing takeover talks with CVC Capital had ended unsuccessfully. It was knocked back 19p to 551p, although this is higher than when it revealed in November it had received an approach from the private-equity firm.

There was much excitement over San Leon Energy after the explorer revealed gas had been found at its Rogity-1 well in Poland. As a result, the tiddler spurted 1p, or 9.09%, to 12p on AIM, with Fox Davies saying the results were "the first positive steps towards achieving commercialisation".

Meanwhile, Greenland-focused gold digger Angel Mining was 0.1p better off at 2.55p amid vague rumours of an upcoming update. The precious metals producer has been releasing regular news recently of successful gold pours, and hopes are high that it will soon meet its production target of between 1500 and 2000 ounces a month.