Sharewatch: It’s getting darker

Previously among the more bullish in the City the investment bank broke with tradition and analyst Mark Howson said “we now see a hard landing as a real possibility”.

It said that because UK housing market statistics were getting worse, it had reduced expectations by as much as 14% for 2005 and 20% for 2006.

ABN Amro painted a gloomy picture for the months ahead, and said that other banks would downgrade their expectations even if house prices remain flat over the next 18 months.

ABN Amro now has five negative recommendations in the sector: Barratt, Bellway, McCarthy & Stone, Taylor Woodrow and Wilson Bowden.

Three saw their share price fall last week, but Wilson Bowden remained unchanged at 980p and Barratt rose 2% to 526p.

The rest of the sector was little affected and most housebuilders continue to say that the fundamentals of the market remain, and that low unemployment levels give more than a little encouragement that there will be no crash.

In fact, housebuilder Crest Nicholson was one of the best performing stocks in the construction sector last overall last week, up 4% to 357p.

Jarvis, on the other hand, did not escape. Last week, shares in the industry’s most closely scrutinised company plunged 61% to just 13p.

Its well-documented woes heightened as its biggest shareholder, US hedge fund K Capital, sold almost all of its 25% stake in the company, retaining just 1%.

Friday’s news that German company Hochtief had replaced Vinci in exclusive talks to buy Jarvis’ PFI arm were not enough to boost shares.

Shares in the industry’s two FTSE-100 companies, Wolseley and Hanson both rose less than 1% to 949p and 431.25p respectively.

Reasonable performances across the board pushed the construction sector overall up by 0.8% to 2959.

It was slightly outperformed by the All-Share, which rose 1.1% to 2383.

Angela Monaghan is business editor