Same show, different cast. After Vodafone had propped up the FTSE 100 index on Thursday, BT stepped into the breach yesterday to help save the blue-chip index from a loss.
The telecoms giant's 7.7 per cent leap was sparked by the resignation of finance director Mr Robert Brace, and was worth around 15 points on the FTSE 100 index.
Even with BT's help, it took the close-of-play auction to drive Footsie into positive territory, with the blue-chip benchmark gaining just 9.2 to 6,391.2. During the morning, the FTSE 100 traded in a fairly narrow range, as indeed did most of the European markets, until some key US economic data were released at lunchtime.
The non-farm payroll report showed faster employment growth than expected, but slower than anticipated growth in earnings. The report was not seen as likely to alter the US Federal Reserve's strategy of keeping rates unchanged but with a tightening bias.
Wall Street began the day with some modest gains, but both the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the Nasdaq Composite had slipped well into negative territory by the London close.
That sent European markets generally lower, with Footsie hitting a low for the day of 6,342.2, down 39.8. But, thanks in part to BT, the London market held up much better than Paris or Frankfurt.
The other UK indices finished with small losses. The FTSE 250 slipped 9.8 to 6,669.4, the SmallCap 0.4 to 3,385.7 and the Techmark 100 1.35 to 3,728.67. Over the week, the FTSE 100 was the best performer of the four, gaining 1.5 per cent, while the 250, SmallCap and Techmark all lost ground.
The day's domestic economic data came as something of a surprise, with manufacturing output jumping 0.8 per cent in August. That figure ran counter to the fairly gloomy outlook coming from business surveys. But the reason for the jump was a leap in production of mobile phones, and the markets showed little reaction.
Reacting to Thursday's Bank of England decision to leave interest rates on hold for the eighth month in a row, Mr Michael Saunders, UK economist at Schroder Salomon Smith Barney, said: "We are trimming our forecast for UK base rates next year from 7 per cent to 6.5 per cent, due to sterling's recent resilience plus signs that public spending will not accelerate as rapidly as in the government's spending plans."
