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* Oil price crash dampens mood globally
* UK job growth slows as COVID-19 begins to hit
* AB Foods drops on dividend cut
(Updates with market closing)
By Devik Jain and Sruthi Shankar
April 21 (Reuters) - Plunging oil prices hit Britain's
commodity-heavy FTSE 100 on Tuesday, heightening concerns about
the economic damage from the new coronavirus.
Oil majors BP Plc and Royal Dutch Shell fell
3% and 2.5% respectively, with banking and mining stocks also
contributing to a 3% drop for the FTSE 100 index.
Europe's biggest bank, HSBC, cut a number of top
management roles in its investment bank despite a wider firing
freeze, according to memos seen by Reuters. Its shares were down
4.5%.
Investors were on edge after U.S. crude oil futures
for delivery in May fell for the first time on Monday to as much
as negative $40 a barrel, with sinking oil demand since the
start of the coronavirus outbreak squeezing storage facilities.
While that trade was seen as anomalous, steep declines in
both Brent and U.S. crude oil futures expiring in June
on Tuesday fuelled further worries of a demand shock.
"It's a sensible reaction (from equity markets). It's fairly
clear the technical conditions that drove the move yesterday,"
said Ian Williams, economics & strategy research analyst at Peel
Hunt. "But demand is not going to come back anytime soon. We
could get a repeat performance next month."
With billions of dollars injected into Britain's economy
through fiscal and monetary measures, the FTSE 100 has recovered
about 15% from its mid-March low but still stands more than 26%
down from its January peak.
With the earnings season gathering pace, investors are on
the lookout for any fresh signs of pain as business in Europe
prepares to post its steepest profit decline since the financial
crisis of 2008.
Analysts are forecasting a 22% drop in earnings for
companies listed on the pan-European STOXX 600 index,
according to Refinitiv data.
The world's largest listed miner, BHP Group,
fell 6.4% after it warned that global steel production
excluding China could drop sharply this year because of the
pandemic.
Shares in fellow miners Anglo American and Glencore
dropped about 6%, also hit by weak commodity prices,
while Russian steelmaker Evraz Plc dropped 11.2% to the
bottom of the FTSE 100.
John Lewis Partnership, which owns the Waitrose supermarket
business, said sales at its department stores could decline by
around 35% this year in a worst-case scenario because of the
coronavirus crisis.
Primark-owner Associated British Foods declined 6.1%
after it scrapped its interim dividend payout and said it could
not provide a full-year earnings forecast.
The domestically oriented FTSE 250 midcap index fell
2.7% amid concerns Britain was set to be among the European
countries hit worst by the virus.
Data released earlier showed British job growth slowed in
March but unemployment benefit claims rose by 12,100 last month,
far below the 172,500 forecast by economists.
(Reporting by Devik Jain and Sruthi Shankar in Bengaluru;
Editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty, Sriraj Kalluvila and Timothy
Heritage)