Miners and banks weigh on FTSE

Miners dominated the FTse 100 fallers board yesterday as worsethan-expected economic data from China, europe and the Us weighed on commodity prices.

Chris Beauchamp, market analyst at iG index, said: “The bad news continues to pile up. Disappointing Chinese PMi data and the absence of any major new Us stimulus set the tone for a weak session, and the flow of news remained firmly negative throughout the afternoon.”

Anglo American was down 114p at 2,101p, Vedanta Resourc- es off 48p at 930p, Kazakhmys lost 31.5p at 724p and Antofagasta dropped 42p at 1,080p.

The falls pushed the FTse 100 index down 1 per cent or 55.9 points to 5,566.9 as Us jobless figures showed the country’s labour market struggling.

rumours that ratings agency Moody’s was considering downgrading some of Britain’s banks weighed on the financial sector, with Royal Bank of Scotland down 4.3p to 243.3p, and Barclays 3.5p lower at 202.3p.

Household goods group Reckitt Benckiser rose 52p to 3,419p as sentiment recovered following Procter & Gamble’s profits warning on Wednesday, while Unilever jumped 18p at 2,080p.

Outside the top flight, engineering group Invensys was 14 per cent lower after it said it was no longer in takeover discussions with Us-based controls firm emerson electric. Bid speculation caused the rail signalling specialist to jump in value to around £2 billion, but shares reversed 37p to 220p yesterday.

Currys and PC World parent Dixons Retail Group was 7 per cent higher in the second tier, up 1.2p to 17.2p, after it reported a resilient performance in its UK arm, with annual profits up 15 per cent as sales bounced back with an 8 per cent rise in the final quarter.

NEW YORK: stocks posted their worst performance in three weeks yesterday on mounting evidence that slowing manufacturing growth worldwide was poised to hurt profit growth.

The sell-off on Wall street was given momentum as Goldman sachs recommended that its clients build short positions in the broad measure s&P 500, which it expects to fall further.

The Dow Jones industrial Average closed 250.82 points lower at 12,573.57 – a fall of 1.96 per cent. GrOWinG licence fees helped power a 30 per cent jump in profits at Micro. aquarius 53.2p -6.5p THe platinum firm said it had suspended mining at one of its sites.