Marks & Spencer on the Back Foot

There was some positive, if apparently paradoxical, news from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) on Wednesday morning. The number of people claiming Jobseeker's Allowance fell to its lowest level since 1997 in February, yet the overall employment rate was also at its lowest since late 1996. The FTSE 100 made a good start, however, rising 23.51 points or 0.42% to 5,643.94 during morning trading after a U.S. Federal Reserve meeting decided to hold interest rates at their current level.

Dominic Turner
shareprices.com - Wednesday, March 17, 2010

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Marks & Spencer Group

British Airways (BA), which made decent gains late on Tuesday after reaching agreement with trade unions over the future of its pension scheme, was in the news again on Wednesday. Officials from the Unite union, which represents BA cabin crew members, were due to meet with the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT), the most powerful union in North America, in Washington later in the day in an effort to garner support for its industrial action, due to start on Saturday.

Exactly what Unite was expecting was unclear, but there were fears that the meeting would be a final nail in the coffin as far as negotiations with BA are concerned. The news had little effect on BA's share price, which at 11.33 GMT was down just 0.1p or 0.04% to 246.10p.

Another British institution, Marks & Spencer (M&S), was sharply lower, however, falling 4.8p or 1.33% to 357.3p after JP Morgan Cazenove downgraded the stock to "underweight" from "neutral". The broker said that M&S faced strategic challenges with regards to its food retail business and was expected to lag behind other major retailers.

 

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