Falls in banking sector hit Footsie index

The FTSE-100 Index was down 10 points at 5198.5 after an hour's trading as banking shares - led by Abbey National - took a battering.

Abbey saw its shares slide by 4% or 40p to 995p after saying its lending exposure to crippled US energy firm Enron amounted to £115m.

The bank said it expected to make a provision of up to £95m in the second-half, although its overall performance excluding Enron was in line with expectations.

Other banks on the slide included HBoS, off 12p at 817½p; Royal Bank of Scotland, down 19p at £16.36; Standard Chartered, off 7p at 836½p; and Barclays, down 14p at £21.31.

Shell was down 5½p at 480½p; BP was off 5½p at 513p; and pharmaceuticals firm GlaxoSmithKline was down 13p at £17.70.

Cable & Wireless fell by 3% or 9p to 334p after it said it would spend £696m buying 30 data centres run by US web-hosting firm Exodus Communications, which is currently in Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings.

Among the smaller stocks, regional brewer Wolverhampton & Dudley climbed 7½p to 500p after saying it would be returning £100m to shareholders next month. It also reported a 17% jump in full-year profits.