KUALA LUMPUR: Market jitters continued over the morning session as investors fretted about the stability of the global banking sector and potential contagion risks.
Aat 12.30pm, the FBM KLCI was down 6.7 points to 1,405.03.
The market breadth on Bursa Malaysia was set to remain negative with 555 decliners compared to 252 gainers.
Trading volume was 1.92 billion shares valued at RM898.63mil.
Speculation over the future of Switzerland's beleaguered lender, Credit Suisse, remained as rival UBS said it woulld buy the bank for three billion francs (US$3.2bil) and assume up to US$5.4bil in losses.
However, Asian markets remained cautious and looked ahead to the interest rate decision by the US Federal Reserve Monetary Committee later this week.
In Japan, the Nikkei slid 1.1% to 27,021 while South Korea's Kospi dropped 0.5% to 2,384.
China's composite index rose 0.1% to 3,254 and Hong Kong's Hang Seng slumped 2.6% to 19,019.
In Australia, the ASX200 dropped 1.4% to 6,897.
On Bursa Malaysia, banking blue chips were mostly unchanged with Maybank and Public Bank staying flat at RM8.38 and RM3.97 respectively.
CIMB dropped three sen to RM5.19 while Hong Leong Bank gained two sen to RM20.12.
Plantations however succumbed to selling pressure with IOI dropping five sen to RM3.86, Sime Darby Plantation
shedding five sen to RM4.22 and Kuala Lumpur Kepong falling 46 sen to RM21.10.
Among actively traded counters, Green Packet rose 0.5 sen to 5.5 sen, Jade Marvel gained one sen to 31 sen and Top Glove dropped one sen to 90.5 sen.
