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Essar leads the the blue-chip losers' list with £5 billion fall

Last updated: 08:03 31 Dec 2011 GMT, First published: 09:03 31 Dec 2011 GMT

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Its focus on India, one of the world’s great growth markets, has done little to help Essar Energy (LON:ESSR), which scoops the award for the FTSE 100’s worst performing company.

More than £5 billion has been wiped from the value of the power giant as the shares tumbled from around 600 pence to 175 pence.

The decline in Essar’s share price was due primarily to its disappointing performance in the first half of the year when it was hit by delays with regulatory approvals for projects.

However Essar also experienced a decline in power generation in the first half of the year despite commissioning the 380 megawatt Vadinar power plant at the start of the year.

The blue-chip winner was pharmaceutical firm Shire (LON:SHP), whose shares advanced 41 per cent in the last year, adding more than £5 billion to the company’s market value.

Persistent takeover rumours and strong demand from three of its core medicines that target attention deficit disorder fuelled the performance.

Potential suitors are rumoured to include Pfizer and Bayer as well as fellow FTSE 100 constituent AstraZeneca (LON:AZN).

AZ had what can only be described as an up and down year, seeing its share price drop from 3,200 pence in January to the current 2,883 pence.

It suffered its latest setback only a couple of days ago when it revealed its full year earnings were set to be at the lower end of the target range.

The seventh largest pharmaceutical company in the world is itself mentioned among potential takeover targets with possible suitors including Swiss giant Novartis.

Clothing chain Next (LON:NXT) was one of the Footsie’s unlikely winners given the carnage we are seeing on the high street.

Its value has increased by more than 30 percent, or nearly £1.5 billion during the year as it posted a resilient trading performance.

By comparison, sector bellwether Marks & Spencer (LON:MKS) has experienced a rocky ride so far in 2011, dropping from over 380 pence per share at the start of the year to below 300 pence due to the high street’s woes.

Furthermore, a couple retailers showed up among the heaviest fallers of the year in the FTSE 250.

Among them was Kesa Electricals (LON:KESA), which was hit by weak trading at the Comet electrical store chain that has now been sold.

Shares in Kesa are currently trading just above 60 pence, down 100 pence and wiping roughly £200 million from the firm’s market cap.

The group offered investors a glimmer of hope in a trading update in November, saying the share of online sales is on the rise and now represented 12 percent of all product sales.

Argos owner Home Retail (LON:HOME) did not fare much better, losing more than half of its market value, which now stands at £669 million.

While its Homebase home improvement business has done relatively well, the performance of its main retail chain Argos has been dismal.

None of the FTSE 100 or FTSE 250 constituents experienced a year as dramatic as marine safety group Cosalt (LON:CSLT).

The group enjoyed a strong start thanks to contract wins from Acergy before plummeting to a fraction of its former value when the business almost ran out of cash.

In October, Cosalt issued a profit warning, saying its full year results would be significantly below expectations as its profit margins came under pressure. This was further compounded by contract delays.

In November, when the company said it had enough cash to cover its needs for about a week, chairman David Ross offered the group a lifeline by making a bid of just 0.1 pence.

The bid valued the company at £400,000 compared to its market cap of around £16 million in January.

It has been a much better year for technology investor ANGLE (LON:AGL), which has quickly found itself among the most followed small cap companies in London.

The firm stole the spotlight when its portfolio firm Parsortix said it achieved a major breakthrough with a cell separation device that was able to capture cancer cells added to blood.

The company's founder and chief executive, Andrew Newland, said there was "potential for the Parsortix separation technology to become a market-leading product, which is simple, effective and affordable".

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