Shares in Wolseley, the building supplies group, slid sharply this morning after it warned that profits had collapsed by two thirds because of poor trading and adverse currency movements.
It also revealed that it was shedding more staff on top of the 7,500 job losses announced last year.
Adding to investor jitters, there was no news on an expected £400 million rights issue and placing.
Chip Hornsby, the chief executive of Wolseley, would say only that the group was keeping all its options open and would do whatever was necessary to avoid breaching loan covenants.
Wolseley said that its covenant headroom at January 31, 2009, would be lower than it had expected but that it still expected to clear the necessary hurdle.
The weak pound