 led the FTSE 100 lower on Tuesday morning as it continued its decline from two-year highs to trade at 337p.){kind=link}
GKN (LON:GKN) led the FTSE 100 lower on Tuesday morning as it continued its decline from two-year highs to trade at 337p.
The FTSE 100 was down as much as 0.3% to 7425 in the first hour of trading ahead of a key speech from Bank of England Governor, Mark Carney.
Miners rally
FTSE 100 miners were among the outperformers with Rio Tinto (LON:RIO), Anglo American (LON:AAL), and BHP Billiton (LON:BLT) up between 2-3% in early trade. Anglo American was the FTSE 100 top riser at 9.00am , up 2.65% at 1001p.
Iron ore futures Dalian Commodities Exchange jumped as much as 4.8% building on gains over the past week.
The spike higher came after comments from Premier Li Keqiang suggesting China was to push ahead with efforts to reduced capacity in the steel and coal industry.
Despite the strong performance over the last week, base metal have been under pressure in 2017 as fears over capacity in China kept a lid on last year’s strong gains.
Northgate profit slips
The big casualty on the Mid-Cap FTSE 250 was Northgate PLC (LON:NTG), falling 10% in the wake of full year results pointing to drop in pre-tax profit from £77.6m to £72.2m. The company attributed the drop in profit to lower vehicle hire numbers of the second half.
Northgate CEO, Kevin Bradshaw said of the results:
“The performance of the UK business was, however, disappointing with profits impacted by a reduction in vehicles on hire over the second half of the year,”
“A full appraisal has been undertaken and several corrective actions have been implemented,” he continued.
“I am confident that these actions, combined with continued management focus, will drive a significant improvement in performance, particularly in the areas of sales lead generation and conversion.”