THE TELEGRAPH: Shares in London fell as a two-day global rally faltered as the euphoria surrounding a £2 trillion worldwide effort to bail out banks and reinvigorate lending was replaced by growing fears over corporate profits and the possibility of a recession.
The FTSE 100 index of leading shares opened down 35 points - or around 1 per cent - at 4352 as grim reality hit stock markets following a week of rollercoaster boom and bust culminating in huge rises on Monday and Tuesday.
"After a bumper start to the week, the inevitable reversal for equity markets does seem to be underway but there's certainly no real belief so far that this will mark the end of the rally at least in the short term," said Matt Buckland, trader at CMC Markets.
Financial stock were the main risers with Lloyds TSB up 7.5pc, HBOS 3.9pc and Royal Bank of Scotland 1.1pc. Concerns of a global slowdown saw miners fall further.
Asia followed Wall Street down. Tokyo's Nikkei index, which was down 1.4 per cent before lunch follwing its record 14 per cent rise on Tuesday, perked up in the afternoon to trade up 1pc.
But Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index was down 2 per cent, while Australia's S&P/ASX 200 index was down 0.8 per cent, New Zealand's benchmark NZX-50 index 3.9pc, and South Korea's Kospi index 2 percent.
Overnight, the Dow Jones index in New York had fallen 76.6, or 0.8 percent, to 9,311, after a record gain on Monday in advance of President George W. Bush's announcement of a $250 billion bank bail-out package. London Shares Fall as Bail-out Euphoria Gives Way to Slowdown Fears >>> By Richard Spencer in Beijing and Danielle Demetriou in Tokyo | October 15, 2008
THE TELEGRAPH:
Era of Self-regulation Is Over, European Commission Warns: The European Commission has warned the business community that the "ideology" of self-regulation is dead and that more rules are required at both the European and global level. >>> By Richard Tyler in Brussels | October 14, 2008
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