HBOS, Royal Bank of Scotland and Alliance & Leicester led the decliners in London on Thursday, as yet more fresh gloom about the UK housing market contributed to a 48.45-point, 0.8% fall in the blue chip FTSE 100 index.
The fall came after an earlier rally sparked by unexpectedly strong May retail spending figures from the Office for National Statistics. The index closed at 5,708.4, while the FTSE 250 was down 88.16 points or 0.9% to 9,446.6. The day’s gainers were led by miners Anglo American and Eurasian Natural Resources, up 3.5% and 3.4% respectively; ICAP, Next and Centrica also rose. Market observers attributed the latest bout of housing market scepticism to comments from HBOS, Britain’s biggest mortgage lender, which this morning announced some housing industry-related write-downs and predicted...
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