After sinking down to its intraday low of 5,453 in morning trade, the Footsie recovered to 5,509 by the end of trade, despite some negative comments from the Bank of England. Unfortunately, the unemployment report did little to settle investors' nerves as the Footsie still finished in the red.The benchmark sunk over 100 points from 5,563 to 5,450 at around 11:00 after reports (attributed to the Financial Times) were circling the market speculating that Italian bank Unicredit's chief executive officer is meeting with the European Central Bank to ask for greater access to funding for Italian banks. ECONOMIC GROWTH TO STALL, JOBLESS RATE RISESThe Bank of England predicts a sharp fall in inflation from the start of 2012, but warned the UK economy could be stagnant until the middle of next year. In its Quarterly Inflation Report the Bank said the UK was on track for inflation to come down to its 2% target during the second half of 2012. The Bank's Governor, Sir Mervyn King, said this would mean that "the immense squeeze" on household incomes had reached its peak. The Bank also said the UK economy could be flat until the middle of next year and it now expects markedly weaker growth than it predicted in its August forecasts. It cut its 2011 and 2012 growth predictions to about 1%. According to the Office for National Statistics, the unemployment rate rose by 0.4 percentage points, or by 129,000 persons, to 8.3% in the third quarter. The consensus estimate was for a rise to 8.2% from 8.1% in the previous period. That is the highest reading since 1996 and the number of unemployed people, 2.62m, the largest since 1994. "The muted wage growth supports belief that underlying inflationary pressures are limited and that the Bank of England has scope to engage in further Quantitative Easing early in 2012 should the economy fail to show significant improvement," said Howard Archer, chief UK and European economist at IHS Global Insight.RETAIL SECTOR SOLD OFFDepartment store Debenhams fell lower despite revealing that it will cut prices of tens of thousands of items by up to 40% in its annual pre-Christmas sale. Shares - which were down nearly 4% by the close - fell in line with the sector after accountancy firm Deloitte scared retail investors with its gloomy outlook on Christmas sales. The company said that it expects UK retail sales in December to be flat on last year at £36.2bn, the first holiday without growth since 2008, according to Bloomberg. "It's as tough as anyone can remember and with sales flat at best this year it's going to be harder than ever before to be in the winners' enclosure," said Ian Geddes, retail partner at Deloitte, in an interview with the news agency. The forecast - coupled with Mervyn King's downbeat comments - were perhaps why the retailers were out of favour today. Marks & Spencer, KESA, Home Retail, SuperGroup and Dixons Retail all joined Debenhams in the red.INTERTEK, ICAP HEAD OPPOSITE WAYSIntertek, the testing and quality assurance company, took the pole position after it said year-on-year organic revenue growth for the ten months to the end of October was 8%, in line with the figure published in the half year update in August. Inter-dealer broker ICAP fell after saying that while full-year pre-tax profits should be within the range of market expectations, this projection is based on the assumption that markets normalise in the last quarter. Vodafone was also dropping lower after Dutch telecoms firm KPN opened the books at its Spanish operations to prospective buyers, including the British telecoms operator, reports said. The telecoms giant also went ex-dividend today.Energy firm Essar Energy's share price continued its recent decline. After factoring in the +5% fall today, shares have dropped over 20% in under three weeks. BNP Paribas cut its earnings estimates by around a third yesterday citing project delays and cost concerns, according to the Financial Times.One big mover was Game Group, the computer game retailer, which saw its share price collapse this morning after issuing a warning that revenues will be worse than it predicted back in September. Shares finished down 46%.OTHER MARKETSCrude oil for December delivery rose $1.34, or 1.3%, to $100.71 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange today. It is the first time it has broken the $100 barrier since July. The rise came as energy transporter Enbridge and pipeline firm Enterprise Products Partners announced they would reverse the direction of crude oil flows on the Seaway pipeline to enable it to transport oil from Cushing, Oklahoma to the U.S. Gulf Coast. BCFTSE 100 - RisersIntertek Group (ITRK) 1,952.00p +3.50%Kingfisher (KGF) 254.30p +2.46%Cairn Energy (CNE) 295.00p +2.43%Meggitt (MGGT) 391.90p +2.35%ITV (ITV) 67.00p +2.29%Petrofac Ltd. (PFC) 1,422.00p +1.86%BP (BP.) 464.25p +1.55%Lonmin (LMI) 1,060.00p +1.53%Royal Dutch Shell 'B' (RDSB) 2,321.50p +1.46%Aggreko (AGK) 1,805.00p +1.40%FTSE 100 - FallersEssar Energy (ESSR) 258.90p -5.34%British Sky Broadcasting Group (BSY) 716.00p -4.85%ICAP (IAP) 349.90p -4.66%Vodafone Group (VOD) 173.90p -3.71%Admiral Group (ADM) 800.50p -3.55%Reed Elsevier (REL) 524.50p -2.42%Centrica (CNA) 294.80p -2.38%Marks & Spencer Group (MKS) 325.00p -2.34%Prudential (PRU) 615.50p -2.22%Standard Chartered (STAN) 1,330.00p -1.92%
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