Any hopes that the London market might resume the upward path so rudely interrupted on Friday were dashed at the start yesterday with news of a £1.8 billion sterling (€2.67 billion) placing of shares in Cable & Wireless.
The sale of a 10.2 per cent stake in C & W by Veba of Germany, carried out by Cazenove and ABN AMRO, soaked up much of the liquidity in the stock market, driving the FTSE 100 index back below 6,200 at one point. At the close, the FTSE 100 just managed to climb just above that level, settling 75.4 off at 6,206.8, for a two-day fall of 128.9, or 2.1 per cent. At its worst, an hour after Wall Street made a rather stodgy start to the day, Footsie posted a 122.8 fall. Wall Street's advance, which took the Dow Jones Industrial Average to within 50 points of the 10,000 came after London closed.
Adding to the frowns on some fund managers' faces was the halt to the recent progress of the second and third ranking stocks. The FTSE 250 index closed 41.9 easier at 5,518.9, and the FTSE SmallCap slipped 1.2 to 2,366.6.
Turnover in equities eventually reached 1.49 billion shares, with C & W accounting for 528 million shares, or 35 per cent of the total, and trading in BP Amoco and Shell accounting for a further 3 per cent.
