FTSE Broadly Flat after Wall Street Rally

The decision by the Reserve Bank of India to increase its key policy rates by 25 basis points on Friday and the public sector deficit in Greece continued to cast a shadow over trading floors on Monday afternoon. However, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed up 52.6 points or 0.49% at 10,794.58 and the improvement on Wall Street was enough to lift investor sentiment; the FTSE 100 index closed down just 5.58 points or 0.1% at 5,644.54, recovering most of its earlier losses.

Dominic Turner
shareprices.com - Monday, March 22, 2010

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Specialist bank and asset manager Investec enjoyed its first day as a FTSE 100 constituent company, rising 13p or 2.41% to 552p at the close after it replaced insurance takeover group Resolution in the top tier. It could not quite the performance of British technology company Smiths Group, which closed up 27p or 2.45% at 1,127p, after reporting that its U.S. subsidiary Smiths Interconnect had paid private equity firm Milestone Partners $185 million or £123 million in cash for Interconnect Devices Inc, based in Kansas City.

By contrast, building materials group Wolseley was on sifting sands, closing down 34p or 2.1% at 1,586p after it reported that although its pre-tax losses for the six months to January fell to £261 million compared with £464 million in the same period last year, revenue, too, was down 15.1% to £6.3 billion; in fact, its US subsidiary Ferguson fared even worse, suffering a 21% fall in revenue. Interdealer broker ICAP was another to suffer, closing down 10.1p or 2.58% at 381.4p after it announced its decision to close parts of its business in Europe and Asia following a strategic review.

 

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