Miners Under Pressure on Sluggish Morning

• Monday, 15 March 2010

The general lack of company news caused a quiet start to trading on the London Stock exchange on Monday morning and approaching midday the FTSE 100 index was marginally behind at 5,620.97, a loss of 4.68 points or 0.08%, reports shareprices.com, a free online share dealing resource that provides share information on all ftse100, 250 and 350 London Stock Exchange listed companies.

However, with BT’s bank shares rising 0.9p or 0.73% to 124.2p after Citigroup upgraded the stock from "hold" to "buy the FTSE 100 was kept out of the red. Cable & Wireless (C&W) did likewise, rising 0.5p or 0.35% to 144.1p, despite recent news that investors are ready to vote against excessive pay awards at its AGM in the summer.

There were also losers on the day with BSkyB, which traded as high as 597.5p at one point on Friday after speculation that Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation was to bid for the outstanding 61% of shares, retreated 4.5p or 0.75% to 593.5p.

Mining stocks also lost out with Xstrata, down 34.5p or 2.89% at 1,158.5p, Vedanta Resources, down 36p or 1.31% at 2,711p and Kazakhyms, down 29p or 1.91% to 1,488p, the worst sufferers.

Rio Tinto was cleared of any wrong doing in derailing the plan by Chinalco, the largest domestic producer of aluminium in China, to buy an 18% stake in the international mining group. An internal Chinese investigation found that soaring commodity prices and inadequate public relations were to blame for the failure.

Rio Tinto did subsequently infuriate the Chinese authorities by merging its iron ore business in western Australia with that of BHP Billiton and a erupting a diplomatic row when four Rio Tinto employees, including a Chinese national, were arrested for industrial espionage shortly afterwards.

Shareprices.com has been launched following the huge success of its predecessor onlinesharedealing.net, and provides free share information on all London Stock Exchange listed companies, sectors and FTSE indices and makes buying and selling shares a simple and quick process.

The site also offers a detailed news section that is updated daily and provides information about risers and fallers from the previous days trading as well as the ability to compare brokers.

For more information, please visit shareprices.com.

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