Daily Mail and General Trust fell 23p to 381½p on talk that advertising revenues from its Northcliffe regional newspapers had dropped 6 per cent in May. This accelerates a fall of 3.8 per cent DMGT revealed for the six months to the end of March.

Peter Williams, finance director, has been briefing traders at Panmure Gordon and he was apparently in gloomy mood. He said he was looking at further cost cutting across the newspapers. DMGT’s websites – largely property finding – were also proving less profitable than expected.

Johnston Press, owner of the Yorkshire Post and other regional titles, fell 3¾p to 68½p. Yell, the Yellow Pages publisher, fell another 8¼p to 109¼p.

Worse than expected US unemployment figures wiped out an earlier 79-point gain on the FTSE 100 and it closed down 88.5 at 5,906.8.

Quintain Estates, a candidate for ejection from the FTSE 250, was the worst performer in the all-share index, down 33p to 338¼p, on worries that housebuilders would delay work on its biggest projects at Greenwich and Wembley. KBC Peel Hunt said the sites’ book values, declared on Thursday, looked optimistic.

Another surge in the oil price drove British Airways down 20¾p to 233½p and easyJet 25¾p lower to 307½p. Banks were again on the slide, with HBOS, with a £4 billion rights issue on the way, down 27¼p to 330¾p.

Royal Bank of Scotlandfell 13½p to 245½p but its underwriters – Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch and UBS – look to have sold 95 per cent of the rights according to traders, ensuring there will only be a small rump to offload when the rights shares trade on Monday.

The oil price helped Cairn Energy to rise 116p to £33.05. Scottish & Southern Energy was also helped, up 35p to £15.09, after Morgan Stanley upgraded to “buy” with a £17.80 target, saying its £1.35 billion acquisition of Airtricity, a wind farm developer, should produce better returns than expected.

Standard Life lost 15½p to 246¾p after Deutsche Bank downgraded it to sell and cut its target to 266p. It said Standard was one of the stocks most exposed to rising inflation.

Miners rebounded as the prices of some metals staged a recovery. Merrill Lynch named Xstrata, up 145p at £41.07,Anglo American, down 49p to £32.55 and Lonmin, down 64p at £32.86½ as its top picks since they would be beneficiaries of soaring coal and platinum group metals prices.

Ferrexpo, the Ukrainian iron ore miner that is set to enter the blue chip index next week, rose 26¾p to 433¾p a day after upgrading its reserves.

Alliance & Leicester and Persimmon, set to drop out, lost 22¼p to 377¼p and 16p to 447¼p respectively.

Aberdeen Asset Management lost 2½p to 134p despite activist Toscafund raising its stake to 25.5 per cent.

CSR rose 8p to 335p after a microchip designer in the US National Semiconductor Group reported better than expected revenues.

Ladbrokes lost 16½p to 287½p. After the market closed the French Government said it would allow internet gambling, which the bookie is targeting.

— New York: Shares on Wall Street plunged on soaring oil prices and a disappointing unemployment report. The Dow Jones industrial average closed at 12,209.80, down 394.60.

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