By AFP | AFP – 1 hour 31 minutes ago- A broker monitors market movements at BGC Partners. London shares closed little changed …
London shares closed little changed on Tuesday as investors kept to the sidelines ahead of Chancellor George Osborne's autumn statement on Wednesday.
The benchmark FTSE 100 index eased 2.2 points or 0.04% to end the day at 5,869.04.
Osborne's much-heralded spending review is expected to propose new measures to raise money from the rich but is not predicted to include any U-turn on the government's austerity programme.
The Chancellor told cabinet colleagues he will announce capital investment of £5.0 billion in his statement on Wednesday.
But a spokesman for Prime Minister David Cameron said the cash will come from reducing overall spending across government departments by 1.0 percent in 2013-14, totalling just under £1 billion, and by 2.0 percent in 2014-15, totalling £2.0 billion.
"Global markets continued their subdued form today as investors remained disgruntled with the lack of progress regarding US policy official?s attempt to avoid the fiscal cliff," said Shavaz Dhalla, a trader at Spreadex in London.
"Although there has been news reports that Democrats have rejected a budget proposal by Republicans with the potential for tax hikes and spending cuts looming closer every day, investors are now expecting officials to find a common ground and ensure the US economy does not start 2014 in economic tatters."
TUI Travel climbed 3.38 percent to 278.10 pence after Europe's biggest tour operator said annual net profits rallied 62 percent, boosted by deep cost-cutting and keen demand in Britain, the Nordic region, Belgium and Canada.
"Overall trading remains positive across all our major source markets with the exception of France where the environment remains extremely challenging," the company said.
Tesco added 1.30 percent to 326.65 pence amid hopes that the supermarket giant's third quarter trading statement on Wednesday will show strong figures.
International Airlines Group rose 0.82 percent to 172.70 pence as it announced plans to cut 400 cabin crew jobs at its British Airways division.
"We are offering voluntary redundancy to some members of our senior cabin crew to help address an imbalance in our crew numbers," an IAG spokesman said, adding that 400 jobs would be affected.
Other gainers include Shire pharmaceutical group, up 2.43 percent to 1,855 pence, and insurer Admiral, up 1.50 percent at 1,148 pence.
Tullow Oil sank 5.76 percent to 1,292 pence as it admitted its latest drilling off French Guiana had not found any deposits worth extracting.
"The Zaedyus-2 appraisal well (GM-ES-2), offshore French Guiana, has completed drilling. The well encountered a total of 85 metres of reservoir quality sands with oil shows in several objectives but did not encounter commercial hydrocarbons at this location," Tullow said..
Cruise line operator Carnival dropped 3.05 percent to 2,445 pence and miner Randgold shed 2.78 percent to 6,480 pence.
On the currency markets, sterling eased to $1.6091 at 5:26 pm from $1.6114 pm on Monday evening and weakened to 1.2296 euros from 1.2331 euros the previous night.
No comments :
Post a Comment