London’s FTSE 100 was down 0.8% at 7,555.88 in afternoon trade on Tuesday.
Rolls-Royce slumped after JPMorgan Cazenove downgraded shares of the engine maker to ‘underweight’ from ‘neutral’ and slashed the price target to 75p from 140p.
“Given our view that RR’s diversification raises the risk for investors, and further downside risk to earnings, we downgrade RR to UW and add it to the Analyst Focus List,” it said.
London Stock Exchange was also weaker after a downgrade to ‘neutral’ at Exane.
AstraZeneca lost ground. CMC Markets analyst Michael Hewson said this was down to profit taking after the shares hit record highs at the end of last week.
Hewson also suggested that weakness in HSBC and Standard Chartered could be down to the growth warning issued by Chinese Premier Li about the Chinese economy, rather than any spillover effect from the weakness in Europe.
On the upside, retailers rose, with JD Sports, Next and B&Q owner Kingfisher all higher.
BP and Shell were also up as oil prices gained.
FTSE 100 – Risers
JD Sports Fashion (JD.) 149.60p 3.71%
Next (NXT) 6,200.00p 2.72%
Kingfisher (KGF) 263.80p 2.05%
BP (BP.) 394.50p 2.03%
Burberry Group (BRBY) 1,606.00p 2.00%
Airtel Africa (AAF) 147.00p 1.94%
Scottish Mortgage Inv Trust (SMT) 963.40p 1.77%
Endeavour Mining (EDV) 2,018.00p 1.66%
Persimmon (PSN) 2,191.00p 1.58%
Shell (SHEL) 2,166.50p 1.48%
FTSE 100 – Fallers
Rolls-Royce Holdings (RR.) 90.26p -4.99%
AstraZeneca (AZN) 10,466.00p -3.61%
London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG) 8,134.00p -3.28%
Land Securities Group (LAND) 761.00p -3.13%
Ocado Group (OCDO) 1,202.00p -2.91%
British Land Company (BLND) 518.40p -2.78%
Standard Chartered (STAN) 500.40p -2.76%
National Grid (NG.) 1,187.00p -2.67%
Sainsbury (J) (SBRY) 244.80p -2.51%
HSBC Holdings (HSBA) 521.90p -2.14%
