Market report: Thursday close

ULSTER Television, standing almost alone with the Scots outside the bastion of

ITV Plc

Broker UBS placed the Canadians' 29.9% stake for £59m with a variety of mainly UK institutions at 375p a share - a chunky 11% discount to last night's closing price of 421p. No surprise then that the shares were on the slide today, giving up 26 1/2p to 394 1/2p.

It is barely two months ago that Ulster's attempts to turn from prey to predator were thwarted by the rise in Scottish Television and Grampian TV owner SMG's share price. Today, SMG was 2p down at 116p.

Ulster has always insisted it can prosper independently outside ITV, flat at 115 1/2p. Last night's stake buyers may bet otherwise.

Elsewhere, punters are still chasing Cairn Energy, down 7p to a new high of 1410p, with one leading broker forecasting the best is yet to come.

ABN Amro remains a buyer of the independent oil and gas explorer and raised its 12-month target from 1175p to 1700p.

Cairn shares have rocketed since the start of the year from around 380p on the back of a big oil discovery at its project in India.

Wall Street's relaxed approach to the expected quarter-point rise in US interest rates last night - the first for four years - kept London treading water for most of the day, although after New York traders started the session off cautiously this afternoon, the FTSE 100 index slipped 39.4 points to 4424.7. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was off 107 points to 10,328.

Centrica, up 11 1/2p at a three-year peak of 236p, topped the leaderboard after a higher-than-expected £1.75bn sale of the AA.

But Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein was one broker sounding a note of caution. Despite Centrica's promise to return £1.5bn to shareholders via a special dividend and share buybacks over the next 12 months, it reckons fair value for the stock is just 205p as the company is increasingly exposed to the volatile wholesale gas and electricity market.

The departure of Sir Peter Davis as chairman of J Sainsbury came as no surprise but the profits warning accompanying his move did. It left the supermarkets chain nursing a fall of 16 1/4p to 268 1/2p, easily the biggest faller on the Footsie as sellers began to dump some pretty hefty lines of stock.

The biggest slump in the All Share index, however, was reserved for one-time blue-chip constituent Colt Telecom, 27 1/4p worse off at a two-year low of 53p after warning of bigger losses.

The telecoms supplier said trading was tougher than expected and does not now expect to meet City expectations for the full year. Broker Investec slashed its earnings forecasts by 23%.

Major international miners shrugged off fears for their sector.

Just a day after Anglo American warned of tough trading conditions because of the falling value of gold and a weak dollar, broker Credit Suisse First Boston decided to reduce its price targets on four of the big players.

It cut BHP Billiton, 1 1/2p down at 477p, from 550p to 525p but still rates the shares outperform. It also reduced Anglo American, 13p weaker at 1115p, from 1325p to 1200p with a neutral rating, along with Antofagasta, 1/2p down at 940p, down from 875p to 800p.

Rio Tinto, 8p down at 1318p, has an underperform rating and saw its target cut from 1400p to 1359p.

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