London shares slump midmorning

Leading shares slumped to 8-month lows in midmorning deals, with just one blue chip in positive territory as investors fretted over Wall Street's precipitous falls overnight, yesterday's dismal retails data and a raft of poor news from the US tech sector, dealers said.

At 10.14 am, the FTSE 100 index was 103.4 points lower at 4668.5, just above a low of 461.8. All the wider indices were also sharply lower.