LONDON, Nov 27: Britain’s FTSE-100 index of leading shares fell 0.7 per cent on Tuesday, slipping in the afternoon as weaker-than-expected US November consumer confidence data sparked big falls in Wall Street stocks.

The market had held fairly steady in negative territory for much of the afternoon ahead of UK Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown’s pre-budget speech, which was seen as benign, pointing to a resurgence of growth into 2003.

Telecoms were the biggest falling sector, taking 12 points off the blue chip UK index, with Vodafone down 1.3 per cent to 186-1/2 pence after Finland’s Nokia downgraded its estimate for mobile phone sales this year.

The FTSE 100 index closed down 36.6 points at 5,266.0, struggling to hold above a key chart level at 5,300 after a session high of 5,332.5. Overall market volume was 2.2 billion shares, below levels last week which touched 2.9 billion.

The Dow Jones industrial average was down 120 points by the time the London share market closed, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq was down 28 points.

Shares in Lloyds TSB were down 1.9 per cent, dipping after Monday’s gain as takeover speculation washed out of the sector following its comments on Monday that it was not in new merger talks with Deutsche Bank.

Defence group BAE Systems dipped 0.9 per cent to 322-1/4p, drifting after saying it would close its regional jet programme, cutting 1,700 jobs amid slumping civil aerospace sales after the September 11 attacks on the United States.—Reuters