Europe slumps after bell tolls for a bad day Stateside

The FTSE 100 was down 1.2 per cent with the TechMARK particularly badly hit, off 3.3 per cent in early trading. Most of the early big losers were tech stocks, including IT services company CMG falling 9.2 per cent, intelligent agent firm Autonomy, down 8.5 per cent, accountancy software group Sage, off 8.1 per cent, and systems integrator Logica, down 7.3 per cent on heavy trading.

As usual Vodafone was by far the heaviest traded share, but held its ground slightly better, falling just over one per cent.

Software companies have fared particularly badly this morning following a spate of profit warnings after the bell in the US yesterday. On top of a Nasdaq fall of over three per cent yesterday, twenty firms unleashed revised earnings expectations after the markets closed.

Included in the roll call of firms hit by the US downturn were a slew of software companies - Ariba, Broadvision, Documentum, Entrust, E.piphany, i2 and Inktomi all proving themselves fallible.