FTSE-100 slumps led by Barclays and RBS: Industrial metals sink

Another bad day on the London Stock Exchange with the FTSE-100 index tumbling 4.3 percent or 183.08 to 4,046.65 (at 4.16pm) this was accompanied by a fall on the FTSE All-Share index with a fall of 4.2 percent.

Barclays Plc led the way by sliding 6.4 percent to 227p with the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) nose-diving 12 percent to 70p

The Stock falls were in response to Mervyn King, the Bank of England Governor comments saying that Britain faced a recession, this also sent metal and oil prices crashing down. Urging policy makers to act “promptly” Mr King said that this is the UK’s worse banking crisis since World War I. Some market observers say we could be actually facing a worse recession than that of the early 1990’s.

The world’s largest mining company BHP Billiton Ltd was also hit hard with shares tumbling 8.2 percent knocking them down to 888p

The London Metal Exchange saw declines in all industrial metals, led by Copper which has fallen now for the third straight day as demand declines due to the economic slowdown.

Oil companies have not escaped either with Europe’s second-biggest oil company BP sliding 4.6 percent to 447.

Source: Bloomberg