The Indian rupee continued its downward trend and lost against the dollar on Friday. The partially convertible rupee stood at 41.01 in early afternoon it had settled at 40.74 a day ago.

The government may not sell the Dabhol power plant LNG receipt facility. The government controlled, NTPC has been asked to invest Rs 500 crore to save the project from collapsing and pay contractors.

Trading highlights

Reliance Industries was the most-active stock with a turnover of Rs 187.70 crore followed by Nitin Fire and Infosys.

Advancers

Hindalco and Satyam surged almost 3% each to Rs 158 and Rs 495, respectively. Hindalco gained for the third day in a row on speculation that Alcan may combine with Sterlite Industries to bid for Hindalco.

TCS and ONGC spurted over 1% each to Rs 1,221 and Rs 548, respectively. ONGC rallied after the company said it had discovered five new finds of oil and gas at its blocks in the east coast and the north east of the country. Wipro also gained 0.4% to Rs 548.

Decliners

Tata Steel plunged nearly 5% to Rs 586, and traded lower throughout the session. ACC slumped 4.5% to Rs 769. HDFC and Tata Motors tumbled over 3.5% each to Rs 1,754 and Rs 654, respectively.

Auto stocks were weak on worries of slowdown in demand. Hero Honda slumped 2.4% to Rs 681 and Bajaj Auto shed 1.8% to Rs 2,117. Large-cap Maruti Udyog finished lower by 3.2% to Rs 737.

Ranbaxy shed 2.5% to Rs 369. Index heavy Reliance Industries declined 0.5% to Rs 1,660. Reliance KG basin blocks will be operational in one year''s time.


6:30AM Europe dips by mid-day Friday on rate worries.

By mid-day, the U.K. FTSE 100 index declined 0.5% at 6,471.00, the German DAX Xetra 30 index lost 0.7% at 7,566.15 and the French CAC-40 index slipped 0.5% at 5,863.46. National benchmarks dropped in all 18 western European markets except for Luxembourg.

Advancers

French bank BNP Paribas managed to gain 2.3% in Paris after a report that Societe Generale has hired two banks, one of which is Morgan Stanley to study two cases of a possible tie-up with peer BNP Paribas.

Shares in oil large-cap Royal Dutch Shell rose 0.6% after it was upgraded to buy from neutral at Merrill Lynch with the broker setting a higher price target.

Decliners

Allianz slid 1.9%. Barclays, the U.K. third-largest bank, declined 1.2%. British Energy, whose nuclear reactors can produce about a fifth of the U.K electricity, lost 1.2%.

BHP Billiton, the world biggest mining company, lost 1.1%. Rio Tinto, the world third-largest mining company, dropped 1.4% as copper prices declined for a third day in Asia.