FTSE down on banks, oils before BoE; Unilever stars

By Dominic Lau

LONDON, May 8 (Reuters) - Britain's leading share index fell in late morning on Thursday ahead of the Bank of England's (BoE) interest rate verdict, as gloom in oil shares and banks offset gains in miners and forecast-beating results from Unilever.

Unilever (ULVR.L: Quote, Profile, Research) advanced 4.5 percent after the food and consumer goods group beat forecasts with a 7.2 percent rise in first-quarter underlying sales and said it expected sales in the year to beat its target range. [ID:nL08417400]

By 0954 GMT, the FTSE 100 .FTSE was down 22.6 points, or 0.4 percent at 6,238.4, after gaining 0.7 percent on Wednesday.

Banks fell ahead of the UK rate decision. Barclays (BARC.L: Quote, Profile, Research), Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS.L: Quote, Profile, Research), Lloyds TSB (LLOY.L: Quote, Profile, Research), Standard Chartered (STAN.L: Quote, Profile, Research) and HBOS (HBOS.L: Quote, Profile, Research) lost 0.7 to 2.3 percent.

Also weighing on the sector was news that the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission planned to ramp up transparency in top Wall Street firms. [ID:nN07565098]

The BoE is set to announce its rate decision at 1100 GMT and analysts expect the central bank to keep rates at 5 percent.

"The market may take that as a little bit of a relief that the Bank doesn't feel under pressure to cut for what would have been seen as an emergency cut if it came," said Roger Cursley, UK strategist at Investec.

"Today's moves are very much result-driven...The market is trying to look at some of those heavily sold stocks and if there are signs that things aren't getting worse than we thought, then they will re-rate quite strongly." Cursley said.  Continued...