London shares were beset by a bout of profit taking with miners taking the biggest hit in the blue chip sector ahead of the long weekend.

But it was FTSE 250 online and mail order retailer Findel that appeared to be the target of a bear raid. It plunged as much as 11 per cent to 220.25p on worries that more customers would default on payments and rack up its debt into dangerous levels. At the year end it said its operating profit covered interest payments on its debt 3.7 times, "comfortably within our banking covenants". It had net debt of £10 million at the end of March and had burned through £4.4 million of cash in the year.

One trader said: "They are being smashed because no one trusts them after they said everything was going fine and then two weeks later came out with a big write off."

The company which owns Kitbag.com, I Want One of Those.com and The Cotswold Company, warned in April that many of its new online customers had defaulted on their monthly payments.

Eurasian Natural Resources, Rio Tinto, Xstrata, Kazakhmys, Anotfagasta, BHP Billiton and Vedanta Resources all lost 3 per cent and were the seven top fallers in the FTSE 100.

As a result the FTSE 100 was down 21 at 6160.8 by 10.44am.

British Airways was down 1.7 per cent to 208.5p after Air France – KLM put out worse than expected figures.

Morgan Stanley shook up the transport sector by cutting its target on Go-Ahead to underweight and keeping an overweight rating on FirstGroup but slashing its price target. Go-Ahead lost 1.5 per cent to £15.47 while FirstGroup fell 1.6 per cent. The broker warned that demand for train travel would be hit by the credit crunch. It also cut National Express, which was down 0.5 per cent at 875p

Lloyds TSB was one of the top performers, up 3.3 per cent to 403.75p after Exane BNP Paribas upped its stance to

’neutral’ from ’underperform’ with a price target of 495p, saying it was one of the few UK banks that would not need to do a rights issue.

J Sainsbury rose 2 per cent to 351p as ABN Amro upgraded to buy and set a new target price of 440p.

Styles & Wood collapsed 60 per cent to 41p after the shopfitter warned that trading had deteriorated in recent weeks and its chief executive and chairman therefore withdrew their bid, confirming a story in The Times this morning.



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