RAMSEY CROOKALL

8th  August

Afternoon Report

The FTSE 100 is down 1.81% , heading back down toward session lows as US stock futures slump further ahead of the open of Wall Street. The index earlier hit an intraday low of 5142.10. The  DJIA front-month futures contract is down 2.1% and S&P 500 futures 2.5% lower.

In London, industrial, chemicals and miners are among the biggest decliners as fears about global growth dominate. But Lloyds Banking Group hangs on to gains, up 3.4%.

Mining giants such as Rio Tinto and ENRC are out of favour today, though precious metal miners such as Randgold Resources and Fresnillo are wanted again. Banks RBS and Lloyds are also on the rise, partially recovering from heavy losses last week.

Elsewhere in mining, Deutsche Bank has upgraded Randgold Resources to buy from hold and target to 7400p from 5630p. Deutsche Bank said, the company's success in delivering its planned new mine early and a confident outlook on the underground mines at Loulo will go some way to restoring market confidence in Randgold's ability  to convert exploration success into sales.

Premier Foods is posting a double digit percentage recovery today after sliding on Friday following a sharp drop in profits at the Hovis bread group.

Aerospace group Hampson Industries falls back said volatile conditions within the aerospace tooling market remain with Odyssey in particular facing short term revenue, operational and timing challenges. Results at its Odyssey and GTS tooling businesses for the half of the year and the full year will be lower than initially forecast as the results from cost cuts take longer than expected, it warned.

THE FTSE 100 at 12:00                 Down          94          @       5152

THE DOW JONES closed                  Up            60          @       11444                         NASDAQ COM closed                     Down          23          @       2532                                      Exchange Rates

GBP – USD           1.6415 GBP - EURO 1.1508