Britain’s top stocks stage impressive recovery

FROM a seven-year low to a 16-month high, Britain’s leading stocks have staged an impressive recovery.

City analysts began this year cautiously optimistic of better news following a tumultuous 2002 that saw the FTSE 100 Index finish down for a third successive year.

The FTSE, which tracks the value of Britain’s top 100 firms, was nearing the 7,000 mark at the turn of the millennium and even at the beginning of last year it opened at 5217.4.

This year it opened at 3940.4, sunk by the dot.com collapse, an economic slowdown, the September 11 attacks, corporate scandals such as WorldCom and Enron and finally a slow Christmas.

But after a brief first-week foray above the psychologically important 4000 mark, the Footsie continued to spiral in January as fears mounted over the looming war in Iraq, terrorism and the world economy.

Twenty-three days into the new year the Footsie closed in the red for a ninth consecutive day, the longest losing streak since its inception in 1986, and the run reached 11 when a 123-point “bloodbath” saw another £30 billion wiped from the value of the country’s leading companies.

A nine-point “dead cat bounce” stopped the record going further but the Footsie had fallen below 3,500, its lowest point since September 1995 and close to half its all-time high.

With little good news to stop the rot the Footsie kept falling and in March a spectacular 165-point, £4 billion collapse took the index to 3,287, its lowest point since the summer of 1995.

However, by mid-December the index was 472 points higher than the year’s opening mark.