Despite ARM’s best efforts, the large-caps sank into the red as traders
fretted about the strength of the economic recovery. Prompting this concern
was news that China had further tightened its monetary policy, which sparked
anxiety that a cooling of the country’s growth may depress demand for
commodities.
The FTSE 100 pared the sharp losses sustained in morning trading but
still fell 21.81 points to 6002.07. The FTSE 250 shed 24.59 points to
11742.41.
Suffering the sharpest falls were the miners. Silver miner Fresnillo
shed 66p to £14.92. Eurasian Natural Resources Corporation
(ENRC) fell 25p to £10.85. On Wednesday, the Kazakh miner’s chairman –
Johannes Sittard – sold 25pc of his holding in the company for £1.68m.
Also on the slide was Inmarsat. The satellite operator shed 15½ to
638½p amid concerns over a possible delay to its co-operation agreement with
US company, LightSquared.
But defensives were in demand, with International Power and British
American Tobacco rising 5.4 to 415½p and 41½p to £23.66½ respectively. BAE
Systems advanced 4.1 to 346.7p after agreeing to buy Norkom for €217m
(£182.5m). The acquisition of Norkrom, which develops software for
preventing financial crime, will boost BAE’s growth in cyber intelligence.
Despite the defensive flavour of the leaderboard, there was little sign of the
pharmaceutical giants, which were the focus of a lengthy note from
Citigroup. According to analysts, the sector is beset by “continuing
cremnophobia” – or an abnormal fear of precipices.
They said: “2011 marks the edge of the patent cliff for the EU pharma sector.
We estimate more than $5bn of sales lost to generics, increasing to more
than $8bn in 2012. Crucially, our forecast pipeline contribution does not
exceed the sales lost until 2014. We see the market as being unlikely to
overcome its fears until at least 2012.”
Citi recommends buying AstraZeneca, while it has a “hold” on GlaxoSmithKline
and Shire.
Savvas Neophytou, an analyst at Panmure Gordon, also pointed out yesterday
that AstraZeneca could benefit from Merck halting development of a drug
which could be a rival to Astra’s Brilinta. Nonetheless, Astra fell 5p to
£29.90, Glaxo slipped ½p to £12.25 and Shire dropped 10p to £16.30.
Aim-listed Akers Biosciences advanced ½ to 6½p as its BreathScan PRO
alcohol detection technology was cleared by the US Food and Drug
Administration.
Mid-cap ITV gained 3 to 77.4p as JP Morgan Cazenove raised the
broadcaster’s target price to 95p from 85p.
Taking the gold medal, however, was Spectris. The electrical engineer
surged 90p to £13.80 as it revealed that trading had been better than
expected towards the end of last year.
Article source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/markets/marketreport/8260907/ARMs-ascent-continues-apace-as-FTSE-falters.html
Category: Cyber Crime