Markets: Anglo American tops losers’ board

ANGLO American was the biggest top flight faller yesterday after wildcat strikes affecting its platinum subsidiary in South Africa spread to another mine.

Shares in the firm, which said the security situation around its mines had worsened in recent days, fell 3 per cent to 1,818p.

But the FTSE 100 Index closed in positive territory – up 16.4 points to 5,825.8 – after a better-than-expected US services sector survey and employment figures provided a late boost to shares.

Aidan Hollowayat Capital Spreads said: “The encouraging thing is that even if the Europeans can’t get their houses in order, the world’s biggest economy is in good shape, creating jobs and growing which is good for the globally exposed stocks of the FTSE 100.”

A broker upgrade helped Royal Bank of Scotland halt its recent decline. Investec changed its recommendation from “sell” to “hold” saying that the stock has delivered “a useful correction” since mid-September and now appeared to be fairly valued. By comparison, it said Lloyds was starting to look rather “frothy” on current valuation. RBS added 0.6p to 258.1p while Lloyds, downgraded by UBS, dropped 0.2p at 38.8p.

Other fallers included support services firm Capita after it revealed that another supplier was in talks with the Home Office over a contract to support its vetting and barring scheme. Shares fell 12.5p to 763p.

NEW YORK: Wall Street ended modestly higher last night on stronger-than-expected U.S. labour and service sector data, but the Dow industrials were hobbled by a slide in Hewlett-Packard.

The Dow Jones industrial average closed up 12.48 points, or 0.09 per cent, at 13,494.84 while the broader Standard & Poor’s 500 Index ended up 5.22 points, or 0.36 per cent, at 1,450.97.