Bradford and Bingley's full year results, issued last Tuesday, worried the market, despite coming in marginally ahead of expectations.

Fears over a continued slowdown in the housing market and unsustainably low bad debt provisions weighed on the stock.

With the shares trading close to an all-time high, analysts felt that the potential for further gains was limited and that the risk was all to the downside. Analysts at ABN Amro cut their rating to "reduce" and West LB cut their rating to "sell".

Chief executive Steven Crawshaw, pictured, dismissed suggestions that falling rental yields would force some buy-to-let investors, who make up more than 50 per cent of B&B's lending business, to sell up.

He believes that their clients are invested for the long term and will be able to ride out the current weakness.

He also reaffirmed the benefits of the recent disposal programme, which saw the sale of five loss-making businesses, despite having to make a larger than expected one-off charge - to cover the costs of and losses on disposal - of £174.9 million.

Recent speculation on a possible takeover was dismissed, although I expect that it will continue to support the share price to a certain extent for the time being.

Kelda was hit, along with the rest of the European utilities sector, early last week following comments made by Alan Greenspan, chairman of the US Federal Reserve, in his testimony to the US Congress.

The market took his comments to indicate the possibility of US rates rising faster than the current "measured" pace of 25 basis points after each meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee in order to stave off any sharp rises in inflation.

As a result, bond yields moved up sharply and money began to flow out of high yielding utilities into bonds, which, following the rise in yields, now offer a comparable yield with a lower risk profile.

Other market commentators argued that utilities are overvalued and the 20 per cent rally in share prices over the last 12 months was being unwound as the premium to the market was unjustified.

The price of Kelda, however, didn't stay depressed for long and had begun to rally by the end of the week.

Spain's largest bank, Santander Central Hispano (SCH), which recently purchased Abbey National, announced a 20 per cent rise in net profit last Friday.

Abbey, meanwhile, separately recorded an equivalent percentage drop in pre-tax trading profit and declared the outlook to be tough. Abbey is to be consolidated with SCH in the first quarter of its financial year and SCH intend to proceed with its cost cutting strategies at Abbey as soon as possible.