BUZZ-Top of the Street: Evonik, Beazley, UK banks, Capita, RPC

A round-up of notable broker activity this morning from Europe's top-ranked* analysts:

** Evonik: 5-star Kepler Cheuvreux ups to "hold" from "reduce", expecting a slight beat in Q3 and a clear beat in Q4 reporting

** Numis cuts Beazley (LSE: BEZ.L - news) to "hold" from "add" as sees upside to its target price being less than 10 pct

** UK Banks: Exane PNP Paribas remains cautious on UK banking sector, pointing to potentially higher capital requirements and weaker investment banking revenues among other things

** "We see little to make us positive on the sector", says Exane PNP Paribas

** Broker cuts Barclays (LSE: BARC.L - news) to "neutral" from "outperform" and CYBG (Frankfurt: 42YA.F - news) to "underperform" from "neutral" but upgrades Royal Bank of Scotland (LSE: RBS.L - news) to "outperform", saying it looks "much better protected"

INITIATIONS AND REINSTATEMENTS

** Panmure Gordon reiterates "sell" recommendation for Capita (LSE: CPI.L - news) citing lack of CEO, strategy, analysable balance sheet in the company

** Panmure adds RPC (NYSE: RES - news) to conviction list as H1 2018 pre close shows a business performing to plan

** Panmure removes the following companies from conviction list: Polymetal on a macro basis, St James's Place on geopolitical risks which might affect equity markets

GKN (Frankfurt: 694194 - news) among shorts removed from Panmure's list as US hurricanes boost hopes of auto revival

(*Analyst rankings from Thomson Reuters StarMine. Scale is from 1-star to 5-star with 5 being best. Analysts ranked on earnings accuracy as well as relative performance of recommendations over trailing 12-month & 24-month periods)