Market report: Friday close

By MICKEY CLARK FOR MAILONLINE
Updated:

 

MARCONI visited new lows for the year as more broker downgrades raised concerns that the telecoms equipment specialist was on course to issue a profits warning. The group, clobbered earlier in the week following a second warning from American counterpart Nortel, is likely to close its financial year on Saturday on an unhappy note as Morgan Stanley Dean Witter and Schroder Salomon Smith Barney joined a growing list of brokers warning about the group's prospects.

That saw Marconi shares lose 15p to 340, and the pain was spilling over to other telecoms equipment makers as Spirent dipped 7 1/4p to 355 1/2p to lead the FTSE 100 fallers.

The bright spot in the sector for much of the session was a rare gain for Bookham Technology, up 18p to 340p, as Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein rated the stock a buy. Bookham has warned its sales in the first half of the year will be flat as demand from Nortel for its older component range has dropped off sooner than expected. Bookham went on to close down 2p at 320p.

Energis off 16 1/2p to 279p, was in decline after recent sales by a big shareholder and Vodafone shrugged off a buy recommendation from Investec to slip 4p to 193p.

British Telecommunications picked through the leftovers emerging from a recent series of meetings with investors. Shares in the beleaguered group dropped 9p to 510p despite confirmation that a sale of its stake in the Concert venture with AT&T could be on the agenda.

Carphone Warehouse boss Charlie Dunstone tapped into his personal fortune to bolster the company's faltering share price. He bought 197,000 shares at 131 1/2p while other directors spent a total of £250,000 buying a further 192,000 shares. The deals, representing 0.05% of the stock, pushed the shares up 11 1/2p to 133p, a long way from the 195p a share they floated at last July.

Wall Street opened up 15.46 to 9814.55 as the quarter-end book closing led to some book tidying. The FTSE, up 76.4 points at 5664.8 in the morning, finnished with a more modest gain of 45.3 at 5633.7. Goldman Sachs forecast more US profit warnings in the techs sector next week, driving down enthusiasm for the British sector. The techMARK dropped 11 to 1932.2. While some health and fitness clubs go from strength to strength others look sicker and sicker. Lady in Leisure, down 6p at 16p, confirmed its weakling status as it admitted the people willing to buy the group would only make an offer below its current market capitalisation due to the high level of debt.

Investors like the paring-down plan at Marks & Spencer, but executing it is another matter. Thursday's enthusiasm for the stock all but evaporated, with the shares only 1/4p up at 266 3/4p. Ratings agency Fitch also added to the downward momentum by cutting the retailer's debt rating.

Lehman Brothers started coverage of miner Rio Tinto with a buy, helping it gain 35p to 1225p, and Anglo-American also climbed, adding 20p to 4050p. Buyers chased pharmaceuticals as havens, helping GlaxoSmithKline add 48p to 1841p and AstraZeneca rise 116p to 3360p.

• Prices and indices in this section are supplied from various sources and calculated at different times and may not always match those listed on the site.

Discuss the markets on our messageboards

World markets, updated every 15 minutes

Every share, updated every 15 minutes

AIM, updated every 15 minutes

techMARK, updated every 15 minutes

Today's gainers and fallers

Most watched Money videos