London close: Oil price slide fuels fall in equities as rouble tumbles

Oil prices embarked on fresh falls on Monday, dragging the London market down with them.

The price of a barrel of US light crude had dropped about 3.7% to $57.8 towards the end of the trading session while a barrel of Brent crude fell just under 3% to $61.85. The falls fueled a 117.91-point fall in the FTSE 100 Index to 6182.72.

Middle East oil producers indicated at the weekend that they would be prepared to see the oil price drop to $40 a barrel before holding a meeting about possible production increases.

That appeared to limit the effect of news that Libya had to declare an alert at two of its ports, Es Sider and Ras Lanuf, which have a combined capacity to export 560,000 barrels of oil a day.

Meanwhile, the collapse of the rouble continued, with the Russian currency falling by an unprecedented 9% following news the US Senate passed a bill to intervene directly in the situation in Ukraine.

In the UK, there was upbeat news on manufacturing as a CBI survey showed orders at a four-month high, although economists cautioned that exports were still facing pressure from the strong pound and weak global financial conditions.

In the US, there were mixed signals on US manufacturing as the NY Empire index fell to multi-year lows while industrial production rose at its fastest for years.

On the corporate front, building material group CRH fell 27p to 1421p after agreeing to sell its clay and concrete businesses in Britain and its clay business in the US to funds managed by Bain Capital Europe.

Real estate investment trust Segro dropped 4.4p to 365.9p as it agreed to sell a portfolio of six industrial estates to Orchard Street Investment Management for £113.8m.

Good weather helped baker Greggs to predict annual profits ahead of hopes, boosting it by 36p to 692.5p. Greggs said favourable trading with "generally helpful" weather enabled it to increase own shop like-for-like sales by 5.2% in the 24 weeks to 13 December.

Chemical firm Johnson Matthey reversed 26p to 3175p after agreeing to sell its gold and silver refining business to Asahi Holdings for £118m in cash. The group said the transaction is expected to be completed by the end of March 2015.

Carpetright gained 45p to 358.25p as it forecast annual profits at the top end of analysts' hopes.

LGO Energy’s share price rose over 20% higher on Monday morning after it announced that the firm’s Goudron well in Trinidad had attained a flow rate of 1,085 barrels of oil per day.

techMARK 2,824.52 -1.24%
FTSE 100 6,182.72 -1.87%
FTSE 250 15,233.90 -0.93%

FTSE 100 - Risers
Kingfisher (KGF) 319.60p +1.49%
Dixons Carphone (DC.) 425.60p +0.95%
Sainsbury (J) (SBRY) 229.30p +0.79%
Burberry Group (BRBY) 1,594.00p +0.69%
Weir Group (WEIR) 1,710.00p +0.65%
BT Group (BT.A) 398.00p +0.15%
Rolls-Royce Holdings (RR.) 809.50p +0.12%

FTSE 100 - Fallers
Sky (SKY) 863.00p -4.38%
BHP Billiton (BLT) 1,276.00p -3.70%
Anglo American (AAL) 1,098.50p -3.30%
BP (BP.) 373.25p -3.22%
Royal Bank of Scotland Group (RBS) 363.70p -3.17%
Barclays (BARC) 225.20p -3.06%
Ashtead Group (AHT) 1,115.00p -3.04%
BG Group (BG.) 795.10p -2.92%
easyJet (EZJ) 1,594.00p -2.80%
Fresnillo (FRES) 712.00p -2.80%

FTSE 250 - Risers
Soco International (SIA) 259.50p +4.43%
Dignity (DTY) 1,821.00p +2.82%
Foxtons Group (FOXT) 160.00p +2.56%
Electra Private Equity (ELTA) 2,835.00p +1.94%
Centamin (DI) (CEY) 53.55p +1.90%
Thomas Cook Group (TCG) 117.20p +1.74%
Betfair Group (BET) 1,487.00p +1.71%
EnQuest (ENQ) 34.40p +1.71%
Ted Baker (TED) 1,990.00p +1.69%
Poundland Group (PLND) 322.80p +1.51%

FTSE 250 - Fallers
Nostrum Oil & Gas (NOG) 416.30p -11.41%
Ferrexpo (FXPO) 49.62p -11.08%
Hochschild Mining (HOC) 83.00p -9.09%
Kaz Minerals (KAZ) 228.50p -8.53%
Evraz (EVR) 120.10p -8.25%
Drax Group (DRX) 470.40p -7.49%
RPS Group (RPS) 206.40p -6.35%
Bank of Georgia Holdings (BGEO) 1,834.00p -5.22%
Afren (AFR) 32.89p -4.50%
Pace (PIC) 332.20p -4.38%