London clawed back some of its early loss as US markets made a steady opening after the shock Fed comments last night.
FTSE 100 was still 47 points lower at 6,394, but this was an improvement on heavy the heavy declines when trading got underway.
A raft of blue chips reported earnings today, though it was disappointment with updates from Barclays (LON:BARC) and Smith & Nephew that made the headlines.
Barclays appointed American Jes Staley as its new chief executive yesterday but it was a provision of £290mln for forex overcharging suggests that caught the market’s eye.
Shares fell 5.3% to 240p as profits overall fell to £861mln from £1.22bn a year ago.
Currency headwinds were the issue for orthopaedic equipment giant S&N (LON:SN), which also saw a sharp drop in him implant revenues.
The acquisition of robot-controlled knee surgery group Blue Belt for US$275mln did little to improve the market’s view of prospects and S&N limped down 6% to 1,082p.
Shares do not stay down for long usually as Smith & Nephew is one of the market’s longest running takeover chestnuts and analysts suggested if they dropped much further the stories would be dusted off again.
Shares in Shell (LON:RDSB) meanwhile fell 1.4% on Thursday as it counted the cost of high profile project failures and low oil prices.
The Anglo-Dutch oil major reported a US$6.1bn loss for the third quarter, driven largely by US$4.6bn of write-offs as it halted Arctic exploration in Alaska and the development of oil sands in Alberta, Canada.
Leisure group Merlin Entertainments (LON:MERL) was the best of the risers adding 8p to 408.5p.
Among the smaller companies, Falkland Oil (LON:FOGL) was badly hit as it latest well offshore the Falkland Islands came up as non-commercial.
Shares crashed 37% to 12.8p, with fellow Falkland explorers Rockhopper (LON:RKH) and Premier Oil (LON:PMO) off 4% and 5% respectively while Borders & Southern (LON:BOR) slumped 20% to 2.61p.
Elsewhere,Optimal Payments (LON:OPAY) fell on reports it had suffered a cyber breach in 2011. The company said the first it knew about it were recent media enquiries, a revelation that sent the shares down 6% to 325p, a marked improvement compared to the start of the day.Bango did better with its digital payments news, adding 11% to 113p as its Direct Carrier Billing service, for making app payments, is now available to some iTunes customers in Germany.
Energy consultant Utilitywise (LON:UTW) climbed 5% to 195p as it signed up more than seventy clients in the last two months to its Energy Savings Opportunity Scheme compliance service. It takes the number of customers signed to 150 since last year’s launch.
Trakm8 Holdings (LON:TRAK) rose 7.7%. after it agreed a deal to supply a US-based data company with its Bluetooth technology to communicate journey details to mobile phones.