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LONDON, Jan 10 (Reuters) - Mining companies' influence onBritain's FTSE is fading after a tough year for the sector,although it still has a greater bearing on the UK blue chipindex than on any other in Europe.
UK-listed miners have operations from Kazakhstan to Chileand meet demand for commodities in China and the United States,contributing to the FTSE's large international exposure.
While investors often use the FTSE 100 to bet onprospects for global rather than UK growth, the basic resourcessector now has just the fifth biggest weighting in the FTSE 100, down from third at the start of 2013.
UK listed miners fell 16.4 percent last year,more than any other sector, and were overtaken by telecoms andhealth care in terms of weighting on the FTSE 100.
Miners Vedanta, Polymetal, Kazakhmys and ENRC, as well as steelmaker Evraz,were all relegated from the FTSE 100 into the mid-cap FTSE 250 last year as their market capitalisation fell.
Basic resources stocks' weighting on the FTSE 100 is 8.1percent, down from more than 10 percent in February 2013.
However, this give miners a much bigger weighting on theFTSE than on other European indices, either national orpan-continental. Basic resources stocks make up just 3.33percent of the weighting on the STOXX 600 index.
"The weakness in miners last year both contributed torelative underperformance in the FTSE as well as making itsweighting fall," said Jeremy Batstone-Carr, analyst at CharlesStanley.
But he added: "It's still going to be quite a significantswing factor (for the FTSE) even though its weighting hasfallen."
While four FTSE sectors are bigger than basic resources,other European indexes offer bigger exposure to each of those.
Investors wishing to invest in telecoms would get higherexposure by buying Spain's IBEX, while Italy's FTSE MIB has marginally more exposure to oil and gas.
The IBEX and FTSE MIB are more heavily weighted than theFTSE in banks, and despite London's heavyweight pharma listingssuch as GlaxoSmithKline, the French CAC offersmore exposure to health care through firms such as Sanofi.
