Fears over the health of the staffing industry weighed on British recruitment groups, after the world’s third-largest recruitment company published a cautious outlook statement.

Shares in Michael Page, Hays and SThree all traded lower after Randstad, the Dutch group, gave warning of slower growth in the third quarter of the year.

Ben Noteboom, Randstad’s chief executive, reported declining revenues in the North American market and cautioned that the weakness could extend to Europe. The warning came as the group reported second-quarter profits which were ahead of forecasts.

SThree lost 26p to 451¾p while Michael Page was 30p weaker at 543p. Hays fell 7¼p to 168¾p.

The FTSE 250 closed down 168.1 points at 11,415.0.

Renishaw, the measuring instruments group, put in the best mid-cap performance after interim results, accompanied by an upbeat outlook, came in ahead of expectations. The shares rose 84p to 684p.

CSR, the Bluetooth chip maker, lost 98p to 770½p on disappointment that the company was not expecting higher sales in the third quarter, and on the lack of sufficient news to prompt forecast upgrades. CSR guided analysts to sales of $230-250 million in the third quarter.

NETeller closed down 113p at 63p after trading in the AIM-listed online payments group was resumed. The move comes after the company agreed a £66 million deal with US authorities over the use of its services in the country by online gaming customers.

EMI fell 13½p to 247¾p after it emerged that Terra Firma may lose backing for its bid for the music group if it fails to win the support of shareholders owning 90 per cent of EMI’s shares.

SCi lost 24½p to 374p after ABN Amro cut its target price on the computer games developer from 608p to 420p.

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