The sun is out, the sky is blue - but it’s raining

In London, retailers and miners dominated the session, suffering some hefty falls.

Randgold Resources was the biggest faller, losing more than a tenth of its value, down 775p to £58.30, as investors took fright at an 11 per cent fall in first-quarter production and problems at the miner’s Kibali site in the Democratic Republic of Congo and its Tongon mine in the Ivory Coast, which analysts at RBC said were “not one-offs in our view”. The market overlooked higher profits, made on lower costs and a higher gold price.

Reports that Glencore was considering the sale of its gold mine in Kazakhstan, for as much as $2 billion, failed to lift the miner, which ended the session down 4¾p to a shade above 145p. There was no help either from a first- quarter update, reiterating guidance for the company’s trading business and keeping production forecasts largely unchanged.

From Central Asia to Brazil, and BHP Billiton slid 50½p to 824¾p after the miner and Vale, its parter in the country, were hit with a $43.5 billion civil lawsuit from federal prosecutors over the deadly dam collapse last November at the duo’s Samarco venture.

Away from the dominant mining sector, the heavily shorted supermarkets also littered the fallers’ board. J Sainsbury slipped almost 18p to 267¾p after the grocer posted a fall in annual underlying profits, warned the market would remain competitive and trimmed the dividend. Underlining the impact of the industry price war, none of the Big Four increased sales in the quarter to April 24, according to figures from Kantar. Investors were also given reason to check out of Wm Morrison, down 3½p to 187½p, after Bernstein warned, ahead of the company’s quarterly trading update this morning, that “enthusiasm and valuation has run ahead of itself”.

Still in the shops, Next outperformed, up 172p to £51.50, as investors bet that the sell-off had gone far enough, in spite of the retailer lowering its profit guidance again.

Back with the fallers, and capping a downbeat session, particularly for investors hoping for a bidding war, shares in the London Stock Exchange, owner of the FTSE indices, were also lower, down 113p to £25.76 after Intercontinental Exchange, the group behind the rival New York Stock Exchange, scrapped plans to gatecrash the tie-up between the LSE and Deutsche Börse.

Wall Street report: Disappointing American jobs figures and weaker company results than expected weighed on the market, taking the Dow Jones industrial average lower for a second day in succession. The Dow closed down 99.65 at 17,651.26 points.

Barclays in African stake sale
Barclays pressed ahead with the sale of a stake in its African division, helped by the arrival of a South African state-backed pension fund as an anchor investor in a share placing (Callum Jones writes).

Barclays embarked on a placing of 103.6 million shares in Barclays Africa, amounting to 12.2 per cent of the division’s share capital.

As part of the deal, Public Investment Corporation agreed to subscribe for 10.3 million shares, giving it a 1.2 per cent stake in the business.

It came as the deputy governor of the South African reserve bank delivered a blow to a prospective bid by Bob Diamond, the bank’s former chief executive, to buy Barclays Africa as part of his plan to build a banking titan in the continent.

Kuben Naidoo said: “As a regulator, we won’t be comfortable with a private equity play for any of the banks.” Mr Diamond had been planning to pursue a consortium bid for Barclays Africa through a private equity firm he founded called Atlas Merchant Capital.

Barclays will retain a 50.1 per cent of shares after the sale, which is expected to take place over the next three years.

Barclays shares closed 2¼p lower at 162½p.

Follow us on Twitter for updates @timesbusiness