London shares are treading water in the morning session ahead of the Bank of England's interest rate decision at midday, shrugging off a 245 point decline on Wall Street overnight. The FTSE 100 index is down 18.65 points at 4489.15 points by mid-morning, led lower by mining stocks. The morning's biggest gainer is Tullow Oil - up 35p at 745p - after announcing that it has made new discoveries around its Jubilee field offshore Ghana. Tullow has interests in three exploration licences in the area: Shallow Water Tano, Deepwater Tano and West Cape Three Points. The latter two blocks are in deep water and in 2007 a major oil find was located between them which was named the Jubilee field. Since then Tullow and partner Anadarko have drilled further exploratory wells in West Cape and said this morning that the Jubilee field appears to extend much further than originally expected to the south east. Autonomy has added 33p to 1014p after the Cambridge-based software group said earnings for 2008 will be ahead of the City's expectations. Shares in Sainsbury's are down 7.75p at 315p as profit takers emerge after its strong trading update while Vodafone loses another 1.8p to 140.95p as its recent rally splutters. BP has added 6.5p to 530.25p, rallying slightly ahead of its fourth quarter results on February 3. The stock took a tumble yesterday on talk that the oil giant has been guiding analysts' lower on their forecasts. That was denied by the firm yesterday but the company had been pointing the City towards the 'trading conditions update' provided on its website, which gives data on a range of oil prices. The update shows that in the last quarter of 2008, Brent crude averaged $55.48 a barrel compared with $115.09 in the previous quarter and $88.45 in the previous year. The figures do not represent the actual prices that BP was getting for its oil but do show the dramatic turnaround in the oil price. From Monday BP will start providing data for the first quarter of this year. Recruitment firm Hays has lost 3.25p to 73.25p after a trading update this morning showed that fees dropped 10% in the three months to end December on a like-for-like basis. The UK's largest staffing company also warned that demand for permanent placements "continues to fall at an increasing rate" in the UK and Australia. Land Securities has added 4.5p to £10.04 after the property group said it is selling its Trillium outsourcing arm for £750m to property investment and services company Telereal. The deal will generate about £444m of cash for the property company. Shares in Mecom, the heavily indebted European media empire run by former Mirror boss David Montgomery, add 0.24p to 1.5p - a rise of almost 20% - on hopes that it is about to sell its German newspaper operation for €165m (£148m) with a deal expected to be signed tomorrow. The company, which has debts of almost £600m, has until the end of next month to thrash out a deal with its lending banks and a successful asset disposal could strengthen its hand in those talks. Down among the small stocks, shares in Dyson Group - the chemicals company, not the designer of vacuum cleaners - have climbed strongly this week and added another 2.25p in early trading to stand at 21p on persistent talk of a bid at 40p. Source: Guardian.co.uk