An opening decline on Wall Street has taken some of the steam out of the London market.
Ahead of the quarterly earnings season in the US, set to start tomorrow with Alcoa, investors' nerves have been set jangling by suggestions the government might need another stimulus package to bail out the economy. This after $1trillion has already been committed.
So the Dow Jones Industrial Average has lost more than 70 points in early trading, and the FTSE 100 has slipped from earlier highs to 4204.65, up 9.74 points.
Two businesses heading for controversial annual meetings were under pressure. Marks & Spencer fell 6p to 308.25p ahead of tomorrow's meeting when Sir Stuart Rose will face calls to split the chairman and chief executive roles.
Cable & Wireless is down 2.6p to 130.6p as corporate governance bodies urged investors to vote against the company's latest remuneration plan at next week's annual meeting. Meanwhile UBS cut its price target from 130p to 150p and said:
"Given the lack of leverage we wonder if a buyback could be more accretive and straightforward than [the proposed] demerger."
