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FTSE skids nearly 5 pct lower as oils, Wall St slide

Wed Nov 19, 2008 12:05pm EST
 
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* FTSE 100 ends down 4.8 percent at 4,005.68 points

* 0il shares lead decline, tracking crude lower

* BoE minutes signal further steep rate cuts could come

By Rebekah Curtis

LONDON, Nov 19 (Reuters) - Britain's FTSE 100 .FTSE skidded 4.8 percent lower on Wednesday, with banks and oil shares tumbling and as Wall Street took a whipping from a grim outlook for the global autos industry.

The FTSE 100 closed down 202.87 points at 4,005.68. The index has lost 38 percent so far this year as a global banking crisis has driven the global economy onto the brink of recession.

Shares in energy companies were the day's standout losers, with BP (BP.L), Royal Dutch Shell (RDSa.L) and BG Group (BG.L) dropping between 3.7 and 5.9 percent as crude oil fell about 1 percent.

A battered banks sector was further depressed by J.P Morgan Securities slashing its earnings estimates on the UK banking sector and taking the axe to share-price targets. [ID:nBNG377145]

HSBC (HSBA.L) dropped 9.1 percent, with WestLB also cutting its rating to "sell" from "reduce", while Barclays (BARC.L) lost 13.3 percent.

HBOS shares were up 2.1 percent, however, on hopes that Wednesday's meeting of Lloyds TSB LLOYL> shareholders will secure government funding and OK the takeover of HBOS (HBOS.L).

Lloyds TSB shares fell 9.7 percent.

On the economic front, minutes from the Bank of England's November rate-setting meeting raised expectations of further big cuts, showing the bank considered slashing borrowing costs by more than 200 basis points this month, before settling for a 150-basis points cut.

"Everybody's focusing on the fact that the rate cut potentially could have been an awful lot bigger than it subsequently turned to out to be," said Peter Dixon, an economist at Commerzbank.

"It gives the sense that the bank is not quite on top of things," he added. "You'd have thought there'd have been a lot more progressive moves towards preparing the markets and indeed preparing the committee itself for this sudden change."

  Continued...

 

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