In London, with crude trading more than $1 higher, BP gained 2%, BG Group advanced 1.6% and Royal Dutch Shell added 1.6%. Next led the FTSE with a gain of 4.6% as the fashion retailer continued its recent strong performance on rumours of private equity interest.

J Sainsbury reported a 5.9% rise in fourth quarter same-store sales excluding fuel and said it was confident it can continue to build on its recovery. The UK third largest supermarket, up 0.2%, made no reference to any possible bids from private equity players.

United Utilities added 1.1% after its trading update said full-year results for the year to March 31 were expected to be in-line with management expectations. Aberdeen Asset Management also performed strongly with a rise of 4.6% after a positive trading update

Ahead of a trading update on Friday, FKI gained of 3%. The engineering group performed strongly for a second session on hopes that a significant disposal may be announced.

Decliners

Woolworths Group dipped 2.3% after the retailer reported that full-year pre-tax profits slumped to 16 million pounds last year compared with 61.5 million pounds in 2005. Same-store sales fell by 6% last year. The company issued a cautious outlook statement and said the retail environment was likely to remain challenging.

Stocks trading ex-dividend fell, including Scottish & Newcastle off 3.1%, Wolseley 2.6% lower and Standard Life down 1.1%.


9:00AM Asian markets finished sharply lower on U.S. growth concerns.
Asian markets ended distinctly lower on Wednesday. Tokyo Nikkei 225 Average gave back earlier gains, falling as much as 1%, ending 0.6% lower at 17,254.73. Toyota, largest automaker in Japan, fell 1.4 %. Sony Corp., the maker of consumer electronics which made 70% of its sales overseas last year, fell 2.1%.

Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., the world largest contract manufacturer, declined 2.3%. Shares of Sapporo Holdings were down 1.7% on reports that shareholders are likely to support measures Thursday that will make it difficult for an outside group to takeover the brewer.

Hong Kong Hang Seng Index was 0.9% lower at 19,525.32. Shares of Hong Kong-listed Hang Lung Properties fell 3.1%. Shares of Hong Kong fixed-line operator PCCW were up 0.9% ahead of the release of its full-year results later Wednesday.

South Korea Kospi Index closed 0.9% lower to 1,439.74, Straits Times Index in Singapore ended 1.3% down at 3,201.17 and Taiwan Weighted Price Index shed 0.7% to 7,788.14. Australian S&P ASX/200 closed down 0.7% to 5,923.20 and Shanghai Composite Index egded lower 1.1% to end at 3173.01. Both markets had posted gains earlier in the session.

Oil stocks bucked the trend and advanced. Shares of Inpex rose 2% in Tokyo trading, while Nippon Oil, Japan largest oil distributor, rose 0.7%. Also on the advance, Australian Woodside Petroleum was up 0.3% and Chinese Cnooc rose 0.3% in Hong Kong.


8:00AM NY-7:00PM Mumbai Sensex plummets on heavy selling in large-caps.
The Sensex on BSE finished 239.98 points, or 1.83%, lower at 12,884.34. The session was highly volatile as the market traded within a range of 175 points. The market breadth was weak as there were three decliners for each advancer. As 1,936 stocks declined, 651 advanced and 61 remained unchanged. Of the 30 stocks in the Sensex only eight advanced, while the rest declined. The turnover on BSE was Rs 4,008 crore, higher than Rs 3,209.57 crore on Monday, while on NSE, the turnover was Rs 8,363.28 crore, much higher than Rs 6,753.15 on Monday.

Economic news

Deutsche Bank, biggest bank in Germany, will invest in emerging markets such as India, as it aims to expand consumer banking and money management to help increase pretax profit, excluding nonrecurring gains or costs, to 8.4 billion euros in 2008. The bank opened eight branches in India and began selling credit cards there.

The rupee kept surging against the US dollar and hit a multi-year high of 43.1525/43.1600 a dollar in late morning deals on sustained dollar sales by banks together with strong capital inflows.

Trading highlights

Indiabulls Real Estate was the most-active stock with a turnover of Rs 491.75 crore followed by Infosys and TCS.