BT and Vodafone among major telecoms fallers

NEWS The London market bounced back today with a return of confidence after telecoms shares yesterday led a rout which spread to tech stocks and left the FTSE100 at its lowest level for a month at 5389.8. Early trading boosted the index by 24.5 points. The fall-out in telecoms stocks is pan-European, led by last week's heavy sales of Deutsche Telekom shares. Yesterday it hit London with BT dropping 23p to 424p; Vodafone down 5 1/2p to 131p and Marconi continuing its slide by 3p to hit an all-time low of 68p. Colt, C&W, Energis and Telewest all suffered with their industry competitors. Energis achieved the largest percentage fall of 12 per cent to 83p, but was the first to recover today, gaining 4p to 87p. The telecoms tumble was a surprise to most observers, as it was generally thought that the sector hat bottomed out. But the Deutsche Telekom share sale revealed that there was probably more telco stock than potential buyers. About 12.5 per cent of DT's stock is held by institutions who received it as part of the cash and stock purchase of Voicestream last year. Few of these companies have any interest in keeping their 520 million shares in the German telco.