FTSE 100 Broadly Unchanged Ahead of Weekend

The FTSE 100 index remained broadly flat during early trading on Friday, on a day when company news was sparse and trading light.

Paul Hutchinson
shareprices.com - Friday, June 12, 2009

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Overall, the blue chip index was down 0.87 points or 0.02% at 4,461.00.

Barclays announced that it had sold the whole of its Barclays Global Investors business, including its ETF ("Exchange Traded Fund") business, iShares, to U.S. asset manager, BlackRock, for £8.1 billion ($13.5 billion). BlackRock will pay $6.6 billion in cash and the rest in shares to complete the deal and in doing so will trigger a so-called "break" fee of just over £100 million agreed between Barclays and CVC Capital Partners when the private equity firm agreed to buy iShares for $4.4 billion at the end of March. Investor reaction to the announcement was only lukewarm, however, and Barclays share price fell 1.8% to 299p in the immediate aftermath.

The fall was reflected across the banking sector, with Standard Chartered down 1.2% at £11.95, HSBC down 0.6% at 54.3p, and Lloyds Banking Group down 0.5% at 66.4p, as investors digested the implications of Barclays' announcement.

The recent rally in the price of crude oil faltered on Friday with the price falling back towards $72 a barrel after reaching an 8-month high at over $73 a barrel on Thursday. Share prices in oil majors suffered accordingly, and lower commodity prices pushed down share prices in mining companies. In fact, Vedanta Resources was the worst performer of all amongst FTSE 100 constituent companies, down 84p or 4.81% at £16.63. Conversely, BT Group was the best performer of all, up 4.6p or 4.95% at 97.6p, after the stock was upgraded to "buy" from "neutral" by Merrill Lynch.

 

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