Blue chips stocks overcome rocky start
Blue-chip stocks were on the rise at lunchtime after overcoming a rocky start to the session.
Following a sharp fall overnight on Wall Street, shares on the UK plunged 57 points during the first 15 minutes of trading.
The mood had been hurt by a massive slide on the Dow Jones Industrial Average and a 2.7% fall on the Nasdaq.
This followed the Federal Reserve's decision to cut interest rates by a quarter point to 3.5%.
Yet the London market saw confidence levels edge back up during the morning and by lunchtime, the FTSE 100 Index was ahead 21.4 points at 5351.7.
The overall mood was helped by revised GDP figures today, which contained few surprises as the headline figure stayed unchanged.
Yet despite the gains, a number of telecom stocks were failing to benefit.
Colt Telecom shed 5p to 229p, Telewest Communications slipped 2¼p to 63¾p, and Energis fell 3¾p at 80¼p to top the Footsie fallers' board.
But not all tech and telecom stocks were feeling the pinch, with mobile phone company Vodafone bucking the trend to rise 3p at 136p and British Telecom edging 5¼p ahead at 455½p.
Among the smaller stocks, Irish internet security firm Baltimore Technologies jumped 10%, or 2¼p ahead to 24½p, after announcing plans to cut 220 jobs and refocus its business.
However, former building society Bradford & Bingley slipped 8½p to 328½p, a 3% fall.
The group today announced pre-exceptional pre-tax profits of £129.8m, marginally up on £129.5m last time, along with further plans to cut jobs.
