By Joey Gardiner, 5 April 2001 09:30
NEWS The FTSE 100 lifted one per cent to 5588 points on opening, with tech stocks keeping pace with the rise. Telcos fared particularly well in early trading, with Cable & Wireless up 4.7 per cent, Telewest up 3.8 per cent and BT, buoyed by speculation it is nearing a sell-off of subsidiary Yell, also up 3.3 per cent. Markets may also have been lifted from positive news from Dell overnight which has bucked the current trend and reaffirmed its earnings forecast. Other European markets also opened strongly, with the Frankfurt DAX up 1.4 per cent and the Paris CAC 40 index rising 0.7 per cent. This is all despite a two per cent fall on the tech-heavy Nasdaq exchange in the US yesterday. The falls were led by a ten per cent fall for chipmaker Intel, and smaller declines for Cisco, Dell and Sun Microsystems. US makrets are nervous on anticipation of service sector employment figures due out this Friday, which many analysts think will indicate the seriousness of the current US downturn.
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