The FTSE 100 share index fell 32.9 points to 6,050.7 on Thursday (down 0.5 per cent).
Copper futures slumped on the closing trading today after U.S. data on home sales helped the dollar rallied diminishing demand for commodities.
Dollar fell against the Euro on Monday due to the unexpectedly weak result from the Bank of America which dampened the investors in the banking sector and also renewed concerns about the US economy.
Sterling weakened against the dollar as weak UK house price data reinforced the concerns about the economy.
The FTSE 100 share index fell 65.8 points to 5,980.4 on Thursday (down 1.1 per cent).Banks had mixed fortunes with HSBC down 1.1 per cent, Standard Chartered down 1.2 per cent. Alliance & Leice...
Soybeans and corn declined on Monday after falling equity markets and a credit crunch prompted investors to sell commodities to raise cash.
The Amazon S3 Storage Service went down Friday morning causing companies to lose access their own data stored on the server.
UBS revealed a $10 billion writedown and an emergency injection of funds from Singapore and the Middle East, making it the biggest victim of the U.S. subprime crisis to date among major European banks.
Morgan Stanley Co-President Zoe Cruz is retiring as the subprime mortgage crisis ends a 25-year tenure for a woman who had been seen as the front-runner to succeed Chief Executive John Mack.
Swiss Re reported a shock 1.2 billion Swiss franc ($1.07 billion) writedown due to the subprime crisis, sending its shares down sharply and making it the first reinsurer to suffer a big, direct hit from the crisis.
Goldman Sachs & Co analysts downgraded Citigroup to sell and said the largest U.S. bank may have to write off $15 billion for debt losses over the next two quarters, and it placed it on Americas Sell List. The report came after Citigroup's own chief strategist upgraded the nation's banking sector, calling selling pressure overdone.
Barclays Plc, Britain's third-biggest bank, unveiled a 1.3 billion pound ($2.7 billion) writedown for losses on securities linked to the U.S. subprime housing crisis, less than was feared. In a surprise trading update on Thursday, the Barclays Capital investment bank unit said it would write down 500 million pounds for the July-September quarter and 800 million pounds for October.
Bear Stearns Cos Inc expects to write down $1.2 billion of assets linked to mortgages in the fourth quarter, resulting in an overall loss, the Wall Street bank's chief financial officer said on Wednesday. Investors were relieved the write-down was not bigger, and sent Bear Stearns shares up 6.6 percent in pre-market trading.
E*Trade Financial shares lost more than half their value on Monday after Citigroup downgraded the company’s shares from ‘hold’ to ‘sell’ and indicated that there is a 15 percent chance that the firm could file for bankruptcy.
E*Trade Financial Corp told customers on Monday it can absorb a writedown of as much as $1 billion and it is well capitalized, after a Citigroup analyst said credit woes put the online brokerage is at risk of bankruptcy.
Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce said on Friday it will take a fourth-quarter writedown of C$463 million ($493 million) before tax on various securities tied to the U.S. mortgage market, and analysts said they would not be surprised to see further writedowns.
British bank Barclays Plc categorically denied rumors it was about to announce a $10 billion writedown and see its top management quit, after the market talk sent its shares tumbling over 9 percent. There is absolutely no substance to those rumors, a spokesman for Britain's third biggest bank said when asked about a possible $10 billion writedown.
Fox-Pitt Kelton analyst David Trone on Tuesday downgraded Morgan Stanley shares to in-line from outperform, citing the likelihood the bank will write down asset-backed securities, collateralized debt obligations and other assets by as much as $6 billion.
European shares weakened again on Friday, as investors continued to sell down the banking and financial services sector as worries about the extent of exposure to U.S. home loans continued to weigh.
Merrill Lynch & Co Inc, which stunned Wall Street with $8.4 billion in write-downs in the third quarter, could have to write down another $4.5 billion in the current quarter, a Goldman Sachs analyst's report said on Thursday.
Washington Mutual Inc, one of the largest U.S. mortgage lenders, said on Friday it expects a 75 percent drop in quarterly income on losses and write-downs on mortgage loans and securities.
Stocks barely budged on Thursday as investors shied away from making big bets before Friday's jobs data that could shed light on the economy and the outlook for interest rates.
