By Rebekah Curtis
LONDON, Feb 22 (Reuters) - Britain's top shares traded lower
by mid-session on Friday as commodities weighed, but Lloyds TSB
<LLOY.L> gave banks a leg-up after it issued results free of
nasty surprises and announced a higher dividend.
By 1157 GMT, the FTSE 100 <> was down 21.8 points at
5,910.4 as shares traded lower across Europe.
Bucking the trend, Lloyds jumped more than 4 percent to top
the FTSE 100 after reporting a 6 percent rise in underlying
profit and raising its dividend by 5 percent.
The bank lifted its writedown on its exposure to risky
assets to 280 million pounds ($547.3 million) and said its 2007
profit before tax and volatility rose to 3.92 billion pounds, up
from 3.71 billion in 2006.
Other banks gave a mixed performance, with Royal Bank of
Scotland <RBS.L> rising 2.5 percent and HBOS <HBOS.L> falling
1.2 percent.
"Lloyds has proved its defensive credentials," said Jeremy
Batstone-Carr, head of research at Charles Stanley.
"You'd have to be pretty brave to dip a toe in the banks at
the moment, but if you have to have some weighting in the
banking sector Lloyds is one of our favourites," he said.
"There is evidence everywhere you look to clearly indicate
that the U.S. is in recession now. That of course will only be
proven when the Q1 2008 GDP number is released, at which point
doubtless there'll be lots of headless chickenry."
U.S. stocks fell more than 1 percent on Thursday as bulging
oil inventories deflated energy shares and the weakest reading
on mid-Atlantic manufacturing since 2001 added evidence the
economy was in recession.
Britain's parliament passed legislation on Thursday allowing
the government to nationalise Northern Rock <NRK.L>, whose
shares are suspended, five months after the bank became a
high-profile casualty of the global credit crunch.
ENERGY LAPSE
Energy shares dragged on the index, falling back after
rallying earlier this week on record oil prices that had surged
above $101 a barrel.
Oil hovered above $98 a barrel on Friday, down from this
week's high on rising crude and gasoline stockpiles in top
consumer the United States.
Royal Dutch Shell <RDSa.L> fell 1.1 percent and BP <BP.L>
fell 0.2 percent. Bernstein cut its price target on BP to 643
pence from 678 pence.
Miners also gave up gains after jumping on stellar metal
prices and consolidation hopes in the previous session.
Antofagasta <ANTO.L> fell 1.8 percent, while Vedanta
Resources <VED.L> and BHP Billiton <BLT.L> both shed 0.7
percent.
But Swiss mining company Xstrata <XTA.L> added 0.9 percent.
Brazilian miner Vale <VALE5.SA> <RIO.N> raised its informal
offer price in takeover talks with Xstrata, sources with direct
knowledge of the negotiations said on Thursday.
Enterprise Inns <ETI.L> fell 4.1 percent after Goldman Sachs
cut the stock's price target to 375 pence from 830 pence.
Shares in British software firm Sage <SGE.L> fell 3.9
percent after U.S. peer Intuit <INTU.O> posted lower quarterly
profit on Thursday, traders said.
Intuit <INTU.L> shares fell 3.5 percent in after hours
trading following the earnings report as unit sales of its
QuickBooks accounting software lagged its own forecasts.
