Market Report: Investors desert BAE Systems

Investors flew out of defence specialist BAE Systems on Friday after news it had failed to win a £6bn contract on which punters had been pinning their hopes.

BAE revealed on Thursday – after the markets had closed – that the United Arab Emirates pulled out of a deal for up to 60 Typhoon aircraft. Not only was that deal off but negotiations for another major contract – BAE’s supply of Typhoons to Saudi Arabia – are dragging on due to pricing and has been delayed until next year.

Rob Stallard, analyst at RBC Capital Markets, said: “We’ve been arguing for some time that the market may have been too optimistic about BAE’s and Eurofighter’s chances for Typhoon in UAE. This is certainly negative for BAE as we think some investors expected it, especially after David Cameron visited for the Dubai Airshow.”

BAE nosedived 19.9p to 422.1p as punters failed to hide their disappointment.

The wider market finally got itself a “Santa rally” and headed up 21.88 points to 6,606.58.

Mike van Dulken, head of research at Accendo Markets, said: “The Fed’s taper announcement continues to be digested as a signal of economic recovery rather than policy tightening.”

The majority of mining stocks were out of favour after a credit crunch in China following short-term rates rising to 7.5 per cent, and digger Anglo American lost 22p to 1,261p while gold miner Randgold Resources eased 46p to 3,765p.

Sailing off into the sunset for a second day was cruise-ship operator Carnival, after a number of analysts rated it a buy following better-than-expected fourth-quarter figures on Thursday afternoon. It glided up 77p to 2,389p.

Oil and gas specialist BG Group slipped 10p to 1,247.5p after disappointing news of a commercial well at its Carioca field in Brazil.

New planning proposals from Labour to constrain the betting industry were bad news for bookies, and William Hill lost 6.7p to 384.5p, while on the FTSE 250, Ladbrokes declined 0.2p to 172.7p.

Aim-listed Densitron Technologies warned that it will report a loss for the current year and collapsed 1.75p to 5.75p.