FTSE slips closer to 4,000 mark

The benchmark FTSE 100 is currently down 12 points to 4,116.80.

Bradford & Bingley leads today's losers with a 12p drop to 335p.

Compass Group shed 11.5p to 340p after an analyst at Goldman, Sachs & Co downgraded the company to "in-line" from "outperform".

Northern Rock, this year's best performing bank stock, fell 21p to 718p.

Mitchell & Butler, the former pubs division of Six Continents and owner of the All Bar One pub chain, advanced 8p to 223p.

Smith & Nephew gained 5.75p to 370.25p.

Amersham, a maker of imaging agents to help diagnose disease, rose 7.25p to 484.5p.

In Asia, Tokyo's Nikkei 225 index lost 33.64 points to 8,789.09 by the close this morning. Hong Kong's Hang Seng index shed 29.79 points to 9,703.72.

Across the Atlantic, the Dow Jones Industrial Average ended Monday down by 82.79 points at 8,980.

The S&P 500 index shed 11.83 points to 975.93 and Nasdaq's Composite index fell 23.45 points to 1,603.97.

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