They say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but for investors in RPC Group, Beauté – its division making lipstick, mascara and other beauty product packaging – looked decidedly ugly.

The group, one of Europe’s largest plastic packaging manufacturers, fell 9¾p to 156¾p after it said that rising raw material prices had wiped out the benefits of a 17 per cent sales gain in the past three months and that second-half profits would depend on it being able to pass on price rises. The Beauté division was suffering from a lack of big new contracts, it said, and the unit would be restructured.

The news overshadowed the appointment of Jamie Pike as its new chairman, who, as chief executive of Foseco, the engineer, successfully sold it to Cookson at a big premium. He will help to steer a strategic review, which is expected to look at a break-up or disposal of the whole company. There have been rumblings of discontent from shareholders over management, which may have led to the change. The activist investors SVG and JO Hambro’s North Atlantic Value have raised their stakes recently to a combined 14.5 per cent. One possible interested party is another shareholder – Atorka Group, the Icelandic investor that owns Promens, the packaging rival.

Ramco Energy, the Aberdeen-based oil exploration company, soared 21p to 56½p as it said that it was close to a breakthrough in Iraq. Its Mesopotamia Petroleum Co (MPC) joint venture with Peter Redman, a former BP rig engineer, and his Midmar Energy is in advanced talks to establish a drilling venture with Iraq’s state-owned drilling company. Hussein al-Shahristani, the Iraqi Oil Minister, said: “We have established a joint venture with MPC and it will start work soon.”

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