BA shares crash as loss forecast

British Airways shares crashed to a new low today after two leading City banks forecast that it would make huge losses this year.

Merrill Lynch, one of the airline's own financial advisers, said that it expects BA to lose more than £2million a day in the year which ends next March. It increased its forecast for full-year pre-tax losses from £65million to £775 million.

The news came the day before BA is due to unveil financial figures for the six months to the end of September which are expected to show a collapse from profits of £150million a year ago to losses of at least £10 million.

US investment bank Goldman Sachs said today it thought the company's shares were worth 128p each but said that on its worse case scenario they were worth only 55p. Today the shares fell as much as 133/4p, or nine per cent, at one point to a low of 133p before recovering to 1403/4p - a fall of 6p.

At these levels the company risks being ejected from the FTSE 100 Index of leading British firms.