This Morning in London major shares slipped lower in early deals. Dragging the FTSE lower again were the financials with Northern Rock (NRK) again the biggest faller down 15p at 201.25p after the Telegraph reported that investors may not get a penny. Lloyds TSB (LLOY) was off 11p at 536.5p after the Financial Times reported that the group was charged yesterday by US prosecutors with knowingly helping an international fugitive launder hundreds of millions of dollars in illicit gains before and after he was indicted in 2002 by a federal grand jury. Its peers were also lower. Alliance & Leicester (AL.) fell 9p at 745p, Barclays (BARC) was off 9.5p at 617p and midcap group Bradford & Bingley (BB.) was 4.5p lower at 258.25p. At 10:00 the FTSE-100 was down 39.4 points at 6,605.1 with the FTSE-250 off 71.4 points at 11,368.5.
BROKER RECOMMENDATIONS
ABN Amro has a buy for Mears Group (MER) and reiterates buy for Northern Foods (NFDS), cutting target to 125p from 140p.
Altium Securities upgrades Burst Media (BRST) to buy from hold with a 12p target and reiterates buy NCC Group (NCC) with a 435p target.
Bear Stearns reiterates outperform Johnson Matthey (JMAT) with a £19.30 target.
Cazenove reiterates in-line Johnson Matthey (JMAT) with a £15 fair value, with shares moving towards £22-£23 if a formal offer arrives.
Citigroup initiates coverage of Moneysupermarket.com (MONY) with a hold, Rightmove (RMV) with a buy and QXL Ricardo (QXL) with a buy.
Collins Stewart has an add and 752p target for Resolution (RSL).
Credit Suisse retains an overweight stance on UK banks.
Daniel Stewart reiterates buy Matchtech (MTEC) with a 540p target and has a sell for Rank Group (RNK), cutting target to 85p from 105p and cutting 2008 estimates further.
Deutsche Bank reiterates hold International Power (IPR) raising target to 450p from 300p and has a hold for Rank Group (RNK), cutting target to 123p from 173p.
Evolution Securities upgrades Johnson Matthey (JMAT) to add from hold with an £18.92 target and reiterates buy Interior Services Group (ISG).
Goldman Sachs has a neutral for Nokia (NOK), cutting target to €29 from €25 and a neutral on Rank Group (RNK), cutting target to 120p from 200p.
HSBC, in a note on European miners, downgrades Anglo American (AAL) to neutral from overweight, raising target to £35 from £33.50.
KBC Peel Hunt reiterates hold Connaught (CNT), has a sell for Regus (RGU) and a buy for Mouchel Parkman (MCHL), cutting estimates.
Lehman bros upgrades Derwent London (DLN) to overweight from equal-weight cutting target to £18.97 from £21.
Morgan Stanley downgrades Experian (EXPN) to equal-weight from overweight and in a note on metals and miners downgrades Antofagasta (ANTO) to underweight from equalweight and upgrades Anglo American (AAL) to overweight from equal-weight.
Numis has an add and 595p target for BAE Systems (BA.) after a US site visit, a hold and 392p target for Detica (DCA), an add and 500p target for Mouchel Parkman (MCHL), a hold and 73p target for Northgate Information Solutions (NIS) and a buy and £23.05 target for Whitbread (WTB).
Panmure Gordon, in a review of the life insurance sector, maintains buys for Aviva (AV.) and Prudential (PRU), has holds for Standard Life (SL.) and Legal & General (LGEN) and a sell for Friends Provident (FP.).
The broker's favourite picks in the building sectors are Persimmon (PSN) and Redrow (RDW).
Panmure has a buy and 959.2p target for Autonomy (AU.), a buy and 700p target for Burberry (BRBY), a buy and 880p target for Cookson (CKSN), a hold and 145p target for DSG International (DSGI), a buy and £10 target for Emap (EMA), a buy and 615.4p target for Inchcape (INCH), a buy and 500p target for Mouchel Parkman (MCHL), a buy and 423.4p target for Phoenix IT (PNX), a buy and 84p target for Spirent Communications (SPT) and a buy and £23 target for Whitbread (WTB).
Sanford Bernstein has an outperform and £16.60 target for SABMiller (SAB).
Seymour Pierce reiterates hold Burberry (BRBY), has a buy and £12-£12.50 target for Burren Energy (BUR), an outperform for Connaught (CNT), a buy and 600p target for Matchtech (MTEC) and an outperform for Mouchel Parkman (MCHL).
UBS initiates coverage of Qinetiq (QQ.) with a buy and 215p target.
NEWS ROUND-UP
Last Night in New York stocks thudded lower, with record oil prices catching negative attention from investors also contending with a warning from Citigroup that the credit crunch could harm fourth-quarter results of the nation's largest bank. The Dow Jones fell 108.3 points to 13,984.8 with 23 of its 30 components ending in the red. The S&P 500 fell 13.09 points to 1,548.71, while the Nasdaq shed 25.63 points to 2,780.05.
On this day in:-
1996 - Home Secretary Michael Howard announced stringent new gun controls, following the mass shooting of children at a school in Dunblane in Scotland.
1994 - Finland voted to join the European Union.
1978 - In the Vatican, in Rome, Polish-born Cardinal Karol Wojtyla was elected Pope John Paul II, the first non-Italian Pope since 1542.
1973 - The American Secretary of State Henry Kissinger won the Noble Peace Prize.
1964 - China exploded an atomic bomb, to become the fifth nation to have a nuclear capability.
1958 - Great Britain's most popular children's television programme 'Blue Peter' was first broadcast on BBC TV. The first presenters are Leila Williams and Christopher Trace.
1946 - At least 10 Nazi war criminals were executed, as sentences handed down by judges at the Nuremburg War Trials began to be carried out. Among those hanged are General Alfred Jodl; Field Marshall Wilhelm Keitel; Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop (a former Ambassador to Great Britain); Wilhelm Frick and Julius Streicher.
1916 - In New York, Mrs Margaret Sanger opened her first birth control clinc.
1908 - The first aeroplane flight in Great Britain was made by American showman 'Colonel' Samuel Franklyn Cody.
1902 - Great Britain opened its first 'Borstal' detention centre, at the village of Borstal in Kent. The institution was designed to keep boys, especially first offenders, away from adult criminals in prisons; to teach them a trade and to reward good behaviour.
1881 - The first edition of 'The People' newspaper, later to be renamed'The Sunday People'.
1859 - American anti-slavery supporter John Brown, having embarked on a scheme to liberate Southern slaves through armed intervention, led followers to capture the US arsenal at Harper's Ferry. Brown was recaptured by the Confederacy the following day and hung for treason several weeks later.
1847 - The classic novel 'Jane Eyre', written by Charlotte Bronte, was published under her pseudonym of Currer Bell.
1846 - An anaesthetic was successfully used for the first time at a hospital in Massachusetts. Dentist William Morton used diethyl ether before removing a tumour from a man's jaw.
1834 - The original Houses of Parliament in London were almost completely destroyed by fire.
1815 - Following his defeat the the Battle of Waterloo, former French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte was exiled to the island of St Helena. He was never to leave the island, and died there 6-years later in 1821.
1813 - Napoleon Bonaparte's French Army was defeated in the 'Battle of the Nations' at Leipzig.
1793 - French Revolution: Marie Antoinette - Queen of France and wife of King Louis XVI, went to the guillotine after being found guilty of treason.
1555 - English bishops Hugh Latimer and Nicholas Ridley were burnt at the stake for heresy.
