Bourses tumble

Press, 11 January 1986, Page 20

Bourses tumble

NZPA-Reuter London

World stock markets tumbled on Thursday (early yesterday, N.Z. time), as investors reacted to Wednesday’s record fall on Wall Street.

But as European bourses retreated from their recent peaks, a further dip in New York prompted the White House to dismiss any parallels with the stock market crash of 1929.

Key bourses in London, Frankfurt, Paris and Tokyo all fell in response to Wednesday’s collapse in New York.

On Thursday, as the Dow Jones fell another 13 points to 1513.07 in early business, a White House spokesman, Mr Larry Speakes, said in Washington that Wednesday’s fall was a purely technical decline.

Mr Speakes added that the chairman of President Reagan’s Council of Economic Advisors, Mr Beryl Sprinkel, had said he would take bets that the market was not facing anything like the situation in 1929.

In London, share prices buckled amid fears of a further jump in British interest rates, which were raised by one percentage point to 12.5 per cent on Wednesday as the Government acted to bolster sterling and reaffirm its commitment to keep inflation under control.