There was little change this afternoon, with London’s blue chips stocks remaining lower throughout the session.
The old culprit that is the mining sector dragged the benchmark lower with Glencore (LON:GLEN) leading the way.
The beleaguered miner announced it was selling copper mines in both Australia and Chile, its latest debt-reducing move following last week’s zinc production cuts.
Shares dropped 6.2% to 121p, but not everyone agreed that it was to do with the sale.
David Madden at IG said: “The stock has staged a remarkable recovery over the past two weeks, and today’s move lower is just jitters ahead of Chinese data that is due out this week.”
Elsewhere, Anglo American (LON:AAL) was 5% lower to 689p while there were losses for Antofagasta (LON:ANTO) and Rio Tinto (LON:RIO) as well.
The losses in the mining sector are relatively small when compared with the losses it registered recently, but were still enough to send the FTSE 100 45 points lower to 6,371.
In the US, the NYSE is open for business, but very little is being done.
The Dow Jones slipped 11 points lower to 17,073 in the first hour of trading, while the broader-based S&P 500 slipped one point to 2,014 while the tech-infested Nasdaq Composite gave up a couple of points at 4,829.
Back in the UK, Rolls Royce (LON:RR.) was more than 4% down to 723p. According to reports, European regulators have launched a probe into its aircraft maintenance contracts, to check if airlines are entering anti-competitive deals.
In the mid cap space, construction and support services company Carillion (LON:CLLN) secured business worth around £1.7bn since the end of its first half and reiterated its targets for 2015. Shares jumped 5% to 317p.
Meanwhile, the Bank of Georgia (LON:BGEO) is to spin off its healthcare subsidiary in a float on the London Stock Exchange which it hopes will raise US$100mln. Shares gained around 5% to 1,990p.
In the small cap universe, Mobile Streams (LON:MOS) said changes to counteract the hit from a devaluing Argentina peso seem to be working. It reported a rise in pre-tax profit to £832,000 last year, from £153,000 the year before, despite a large fall in revenue. Shares ended the day more than 110% higher to almost 10p.
Two hundred year old engineering group Hayward Tyler (LON:HAYT) unveiled plans to acquire Peter Brotherhood, a UK maker of steam turbines and gas compressors, from Dresser-Rand, an arm of German industrial giant Siemens for US$15mln. Shares rose 9.4% to 87p.
Meanwhile, Petards Group (LON:PEG) won a contract to supply rail tech company BombardierTransportation with its eyeTrain surveillance system. Sahres leapt 11.8% to 14p.
Conversely, Sefton Resources (LON:SER) lost half its value as its prospective replacement nominated advisor has backed out.
Allenby Capital, the existing nomad, is resigning when the new board take over. Any company without a nominated advisor has its trading on AIM immediately suspended. Shares lost exactly 50% to 0.02p.
Finally, eServGlobal (LON:ESG), down 24.5%. to 5.5p, said there has been delays in closing some high margin contracts and as such, revenue and earnings will be below expectations.