Market report: Thursday close

IT LOOKS as if

They have been giving presentations to brokers and fund managers trying to convince them to lend their support to the discount airline's fund-raising operation. Stelios wants to raise around £90m to provide extra working capital and the deposit on a fleet of new Boeing passenger aircraft. He is expected to offer around £60m worth of his own stake in the company. The money is needed to finance new projects.

But easyJet's advisers refuse to discuss how much support they have been guaranteed by institutional investors, who have been turning their backs on the airline industry since the 11 September attacks. EasyJet's share price, which has come up from around 362p since Monday's results, gained 6 1/2p to 382 1/2p as two brokers, ABN Amro and WestLB Panmure, upgraded the shares to a 'buy'.

British Airways slipped 8p to 141p following news of the losses at potential partner KLM. US securities house Lehman Brothers reckons BA is worth only 80p a share and says the market is underestimating the impact of the group's exposure to premium traffic and the North Atlantic routes.

It is less than four months since FKI chief executive Bob Beeston disappointed investors with a profits alert. He was at it again today, warning that full-year operating profits will be well down on last year. The engineering group makes baggage-handling systems for airports, and orders have dried up since the attacks on the US. Down from a July high of 288p, the shares touched 140p before rallying to trade 10p better at 164p. Broker Dresdner Kleinwort Benson has slashed its 2002 earnings forecast from 23p a share to 15.8p.

The rest of the London market continued to struggle, having seen Wall Street lose its early lead overnight. Renewed jitters about anthrax and the carpet bombing north of Kabul more than offset better-than-expected US GDP figures. The FTSE 100 rallied from an early 51.4-deficit to end up 31.5 at 5071.2.

The building materials sector shuddered on news from Dublin-based CRH that demand has fallen noticeably since 11 September. CRH shares fell e1.15 to e16.05 as it said full-year profits would be between e760m (£470m) and e790m. That is above the previous year's e697m but analysts had until now pencilled in e800m-plus.

Hanson fell 36p to 435p in sympathy while BPB shed 13p to 240p and Aggregate Industries lost 7p to 80p. However, Aggreko bucked the gloom after UBS Warburg upgraded it from 'hold' to 'buy'. The shares charged 26p higher to 370p.

Dimension Data was punished after its separately-listed Singapore subsidiary Datacraft Asia warned of a significant worsening of performance in September. DiData, which owns 51% of the business, dived 11 1/2p to 63 1/2p, close to its record low.

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Geoff Foster of the Daily Mail on yesterday's trading