Share prices in London ended the session in the red yesterday despite upbeat US economic data.

A positive set of consumer confidence figures did little to inspire Wall Street's Dow Jones Industrial Average, which was down 66 points at 9251 as trading in London closed after concerns about the technology sector hit prices.

Having opened lower on fears over the US figures, London's FTSE 100 Index slipped further in later trading to close down 48.5 points at 4177.4.

Following strong gains earlier in the month, the Footsie appears to have reached a plateau as traders look for the next stage of the recovery.

Consumer products group Reckitt Benckiser did its best to cheer the market by announcing a share buyback programme and a ten per cent higher interim dividend.

With first-half net income 15 per cent stronger at £199m, Reckitt said it expected its performance this year to be better than it had previously hoped.

This lifted shares 32p to 1162p, to top the FTSE risers' board.

Packaging group Bunzl had been another riser in early trading before seeing its gains slip away on the news that the weak US dollar had caused pre-tax profits to fall to £92m from £94.2m a year earlier.

Investors appeared to shrug off the underlying performance and sent shares 3p lower at 446p by the close of trading.

Also heading down was hotels group Hilton, which fell 8p to 201p ahead of its first-half results later this week.

Elsewhere, a host of top flight shares were falling out of favour having gone ex-dividend - meaning the value of their recent shareholder payouts has been stripped from their market value.

Losing out were stocks including information group Reuters, down 10p at 257p, Abbey National, off 20p at 532p, and Lloyds TSB, down 12p at 418p.

Meanwhile, mining groups were also out of favour as traders took profits after a strong run for the sector. Rio Tinto was off 46p at 1361p, while Xstrata fell 14p, BHP Billiton slipped 10p to 399p, and Anglo American lost 27p at 1174p.