Property weighs on FTSE

The property company dropped 17p to £15.68 after HSBC reduced its recommendation to ‘neutral’ from ‘overweight’. Yesterday saw warnings from other property analysts about the increasing risk of the UK residential property market hitting hard times. Cairn Energy is up 71p to £19.89 after it agreed to sell about 12% of its Indian subsidiary. Discoveries of oil and gas in that country are a large part of the stellar performance of the stock in the past few years. Vodafone gained 2p to 135.5p after Swiss phone operator Swisscom said it wanted to talk to the UK firm about buying back a 25% s...