FTSE clings to 11-month high

The first anniversary of the collapse of Lehman Brothers, which triggered turmoil across the world's leading economies, did little to dampen investor sentiment as the FTSE clung to its 11-month high.

Helped by a strong showing from miners and over-night gains in Asia, the market opened at 5,018.85 points, just 3.5 per cent below the FTSE 100's close on Monday, September 15, 2008 when Lehmans went bust.

The top riser was Amec, the engineering group which serves the oil, gas and power generation industries. It added 28.5p, or 3.67 per cent, to 805p.

BT added 3.65p, or 2.81 per cent, to 133.45p and Johnson Matthey put on 32p, or 2.24 per cent, to £14.58. Yesterday, Morgan Stanley cut its rating for the fine chemicals and precious metals group to "equal-weight" from "overweight."
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Among the miners Fresnillo added 10.5p, or 1.45 per cent, to 733p, Kazakhmys added 13p, or 1.2 per cent, to £11.00 and Eurasian added 18p, or 2.13 per cent, to 861.5p.

The top faller was Rexam, Europe's biggest maker of cans for beer and soft drinks, which dropped 56.20p or 2.30 per cent to 263.8p.

It was one year ago, on so-called Meltdown Monday, that Lehman Brothers, the US's fourth-largest investment bank, filed for bankruptcy having been refused a Government bailout.

The FTSE, which had closed at 5,417 points on the previous Friday ended "Meltdown Monday" at 5,204 points. Two days later it had spiralled to 4,912 points.

Global markets have since recovered much of their losses. Last month, investors celebrated the biggest rally in world share prices for 50 years with the FTSE hitting a ten-month high, to 4,896. Analysts said the six-month rally was the biggest seen for 50 years.

In Japan, the benchmark Nikkei index rose 15.56 points to 10,217.62 points while the broader Topix dipped 0.2 per cent to 932.52.

In Europe, Frankfurt's DAX 30 added 0.30 per cent to 5,637,.21 points while Paris's CAC 40 rose 0.34 per cent to 3,743.46.

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