Miners Under Pressure on Sluggish Morning

A scarcity of company news led to a quiet start to trading on the London Stock exchange on Monday morning. Approaching midday the FTSE 100 index was marginally behind at 5,620.97, a loss of 4.68 points or 0.08%.

Dominic Turner
shareprices.com - Monday, March 15, 2010

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BT did its best to keep the FTSE 100 out of the red, rising 0.9p or 0.73% to 124.2p after Citigroup upgraded the stock from "hold" to "buy". Cable & Wireless (C&W) did likewise, rising 0.5p or 0.35% to 144.1p, despite recent news that investors are ready to vote against excessive pay awards at its AGM in the summer. BSkyB, which traded as high as 597.5p at one point on Friday after speculation that Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation was to bid for the outstanding 61% of shares, retreated 4.5p or 0.75% to 593.5p.

Mining stocks, too, were in the doldrums with Xstrata, down 34.5p or 2.89% at 1,158.5p, Vedanta Resources, down 36p or 1.31% at 2,711p and Kazakhyms, down 29p or 1.91% to 1,488p, the worst sufferers.

Rio Tinto was cleared of any wrong doing in derailing the plan by Chinalco, the largest domestic producer of aluminium in China, to buy an 18% stake in the international mining group. An internal Chinese investigation found that soaring commodity prices and inadequate public relations were to blame for the failure. Rio Tinto did subsequently infuriate the Chinese authorities by merging its iron ore business in western Australia with that of BHP Billiton and a diplomatic row erupted when four Rio Tinto employees, including a Chinese national, were arrested for industrial espionage shortly afterwards.

 

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