Market report: Friday close

BANKS dominated the blue-chip sliders after another set of disappointing figures, this time from

Ironically, Lloyds' shares recovered to finish the day 4p ahead at 590p, having touched 558p earlier. Other banks were less fortunate Barclays, which did its bit to put the banks in the shadows yesterday, shed another 22 1/2p to 424 1/2p. Royal Bank of Scotland was down 55p at 1470p and HBOS was off 3p at 692p.

Renewed tension in the Middle East and a perceived diplomatic coup by Saddam Hussein in offering talks to let UN inspection teams back into Iraq lifted oil shares, led by BP, up 2p to 475p. Shell survived a Morgan Stanley price target cut to 500p from 585p to add 5p to 410 1/2p.

Defensive stocks were in demand in extremely nervous share markets with Imperial Tobacco up 31p to 995p and Gallaher rising 36p to 630p.

Dealers ignored fears about the expiry of patents of AstraZeneca's best-selling ulcer drug Prilosec and worries about trials of its key new product Crestor, used for the treatment of high cholesterol. The drugs giant has managed to avoid most of the price falls suffered by the global pharmaceuticals and added 129p to 2375p. GlaxoSmithKline climbed 49p to 1246p.

Alvis, up 5 1/2p to 154 1/2p, has acquired Vickers Defence Systems from Rolls-Royce, down 3p to 142p, for £16.2m, taking the armoured-cars group into heavy-tanks production.

The market went through a bout of nervousness following US non-farm unemployment figures, but then firmed, though many traders were worried that there might be a late massive fall on Wall Street to depress them for the weekend. The FTSE 100 climbed 31 points to 4075.5 despite an opening sharp fall on Wall Street.

Many underwriters had sleepless nights following the Kingfisher one-for-one rights issue at a deeply discounted 155p.

Underwriters at UBS Warburg, Goldman Sachs and Credit Suisse First Boston have had plenty of worries since Kingfisher's rights issue was launched last month to fund the acquisition of the minority of shares it did not own in the French DIY arm Castorama.

During that time, the share price closed at just 10p above the issue price and fell below that plenty of times during trading sessions. Today, underwriters were described as being comfortable with the outcome, with final figures being released next Monday. The Kingfisher share price reflected that confidence, up 3 1/4p to 197p.

Engineering group Cookson's £277m rescue rights is not underwritten, and its advisers have been out in the Square Mile peddling their case to the institutions. The shares slumped to below the 25p rights at one stage, at 19 3/4p. Today they were up 1p at 28 1/2p, with shareholders having until the end of the month to make up their minds.

With all these cash-raising troubles, Royal & SunAlliance was swift to deny reports it was to make an £800m rights issue but its shares fell 7 1/2p to 141p. It also survived a possible Moody's downgrade for two of its funds that have been closed for business for some time.

Luton and Cardiff airports owner TBI said at its annual meeting that trading was broadly in line with expectations though the beneficial growth of low-cost airline traffic has been offset by slower-than-expected recovery in the charter aircraft business. TBI added 1/4p to 67p.

The Daily Mail's Geoff Foster on yesterday's trade
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