The UK market fell on Friday, as economic worries deepened after Moody's Investors Service downgraded 16 Spanish banks. The action by Moody's and some disappointing economic data from the U.S. overnight impacted markets across the world.
Moody's downgraded the banks citing rising loan defaults, a renewed recession in Spain, restricted funding access and the reduced ability of the Spanish government to support lenders.
Moody's said, "The Spanish economy has fallen back into recession in first-quarter 2012, and Moody's does not expect conditions to improve during 2012. Moreover, the real-estate crisis that began in 2008 is ongoing, and unemployment has risen to very high levels."
Fitch had on Thursday downgraded Greece's long term credit rating to CCC from B-, citing heightened risk that the nation may not be able to sustain its membership of Economic and Monetary Union.
Meanwhile, the Bank of Spain said the country's bad loans increased further in March. About 8.37 percent of loans held by banks in March were unpaid for more than three months. That compares to 8.3 percent in February. This was the highest bad debt ratio since 1994.
The Euro Stoxx 50 index of eurozone bluechip stocks is gaining 0.25 percent, while the Stoxx Europe 50 index, which includes some major U.K. companies, is falling 0.41 percent.
The FTSE 100 index is declining 0.93 percent.
Barclays is falling 1.2 percent, Royal Bank of Scotland is dropping 2.8 percent and Lloyds Banking is declining around 4 percent.
Rio Tinto is losing 1.5 percent and Eurasian Natural Resources is declining 1.8 percent. Vedanta and Xstrata are retreating 3.4 percent and 2.3 percent, respectively. Fresnillo is gaining 2.4 percent.
London Stock Exchange Group is climbing 5.2 percent after reporting solid results for the year.
BT Group is adding 1.2 percent and BG Group is gaining 1.1 percent.
CRH is up 2 percent while Centrica is gaining 1.7 percent.
Elsewhere in Europe, the German DAX is losing 0.31 percent and the French CAC 40 is declining 0.18 percent. Switzerland's SMI is dropping 0.84 percent.
In economic news, Germany's producer price inflation slowed to the lowest level in twenty-two months in April, data released by the Federal Statistical Office showed. The output price inflation eased to 2.4 percent in April from 3.3 percent in March, while economists expected inflation to slow to 2.5 percent.
Across Asia/Pacific, major markets ended lower. Australia's All Ordinaries retreated 2.6 percent and China's Shanghai Composite Index lost 1.44 percent. Hong Kong's Hang Seng and Japan's Nikkei 225 yielded 1.3 percent and 3 percent, respectively.
In the U.S., futures point to a higher open on Wall Street. In the previous session, stocks saw substantial weakness as traders reacted negatively to a disappointing batch of U.S. economic data. The major averages ended the session at or near their lows for the session. The Dow fell 1.2 percent, the Nasdaq plummeted 2.1 percent and the S&P 500 dropped 1.5 percent.
In the commodity space, crude for June delivery is sliding $0.04 to $92.52 per barrel while June gold is rising $15.6 to $1590.5 a troy ounce.
For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com
Market Analysis
June 12, 2026 17:14 ET Major central bank action was the focus this week in economic news. The European Central Bank became the first major central bank to move in response to the rising inflationary pressures in the backdrop of the conflict in the Middle East. In North America, the U.S. inflation and trade data as well as Canada’s central bank decision gained attention. The Chinese trade data was the main news in Asia.