Britain's bluechip FTSE 100 index fell back to its lowest level in three weeks today as investors took an overnight Wall Street slide and another batch of weak UK corporate news as a signal to sell.
Banks led the way down, chipping 24 points off the index as the possibility of Argentina defaulting on its debt unnerved markets, while among weak telecoms Vodafone dropped four percent after a Commerzbank downgrading.
GKN Plc's profit warning sent its shares nine per cent lower to 254p, making the engineering group the biggest loser in a FTSE 100 down 75.6 points or 1.5 per cent at 5,010.3 by 13:00. It earlier touched a three-week low of 4,985.9.
Overall market turnover of 840 million shares by the midsession was seen on the low side and an indicator that the market was not selling off drastically after the thousand-points plus sweep up from the September 21 low of 4,220.