Britain's blue chip share index fell 2.6 percent on Monday to its lowest closing level in six weeks, dragged lower by commodity stocks as the firmer dollar hurt metal and crude prices. The FTSE 100 closed 115.94 points lower at 4,326.01, breaking an uptrend channel extending back to March 9. Volumes on the British benchmark were about 76 percent of its 90-day average daily volume.
Commodity stocks were the biggest losers on the index, as a stronger dollar weighed on raw material prices. The dollar gained against a basket of major currencies after Russia's finance minister, Alexei Kudrin, expressed confidence in the US currency on the sidelines of a meeting of Group of Eight finance ministers in Italy.
Oil majors BP and Royal Dutch Shell shed 2.1 and 4.2 percent, respectively. Among miners, BHP Billiton, Rio Tinto, Xstrata, Vedanta Resources, Kazakhmys and Antofagasta were down 2.8-7.2 percent. Lonmin sank 9.8 percent to be the biggest loser after the platinum producer said it shut down its No 1 furnace on Sunday due to a production incident, and started up three other furnaces with about half the capacity.
"The fundamentals of the economy are still pretty poor, still pretty shaky," said Philip Gillett, sales trader at IG Index. "This correction has been on the card for a while." The FTSE 100, which is down 2.4 percent for the year, has risen 25 percent since hitting a six-year low on March 9.
Banks, which have rallied 105 percent since those March lows, were other standout losers on the index, as the global economic outlook remained murky. HSBC, Royal Bank of Scotland, Barclays and Standard Chartered dropped 3.1 percent to 5 percent. But Lloyds Banking Group was one of the three gainers on the index, up 2.3 percent. The Times reported at the weekend that Commonwealth Bank of Australia may join a list of potential bidders for the third-party fund business of its investment management unit, Insight.
'WORST NOT YET OVER' International Monetary Fund chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn said the worst of the global economic crisis was not yet over but there were signs the world has started to crawl out of recession. The European Central Bank said eurozone banks would probably need to write down another $283 billion this year and next on bad loans and secruties.
Insurers in the euro region may face significant balance sheet stress ahead due to financial market turbulence and a weak economy, the ECB also said. In Britain, insurers Prudential, Standard Life and Aviva fell 3.2-4.5 percent. The 16-country euro zone lost a record 1.22 million jobs in the first quarter of 2009, highlighting the depth of recession and boding ill for any quick turnaround.
Meanwhile, Li Yang, a former adviser to the People's Bank of China, said he expected China's recovery to be "W-shaped" - meaning growth will falter once fiscal and monetary stimulus wears off, before regaining momentum.
Finance ministers of the G8 nations agreed over the weekend the global recovery was showing encouraging signs of stabilisation but recovery remained shaky, and they said they would consider how to unwind rescue steps. Among other individual movers, AstraZeneca put on 0.8 percent after Citigroup upgraded the drugmaker to 'buy' from 'hold' and lifted its price target on the stock.
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