Business news for Mon, 17 Dec 2007 & with word benchmark. 3 news.

LONDON led the biggest drop in United Kingdom home values for at least five years this month as higher mortgage costs and the prospect of further declines in prices kept away buyers, a report by Rightmove Plc showed. The average UK asking price fell 3.2 percent to 232,396 pounds (US$473,437) from November, the largest decline since the survey of real-estate agents' listings began in 2002, Britain's most-used property Website said yesterday. London home costs dropped 6.8 percent, also the most recorded by Rightmove. "The market is tough out there," Miles Shipside, the company's commercial director, said in an interview with Bloomberg News. "We see a flat outlook for next year, with no price rises, as we work our way through this liquidity crisis." The Bank of England this month cut the benchmark interest rate for the first time in two years, citing the threat of an economic slowdown. Confidence among British real-estate agents has slumped as pricier mortgages

ASIAN stocks fell the most in four months, led by Samsung Electronics Co and HSBC Holdings Plc, on concern accelerating inflation will limit interest-rate cuts, threatening global growth. Samsung declined the most in three weeks. HSBC and Cheung Kong (Holdings) Ltd paced losses in Hong Kong, where interest rates track those set by the Federal Reserve, after United States consumer prices rose the most since 2005. Centro Properties Group plummeted 76 percent in Sydney after the owner of US shopping malls said it was struggling to refinance debt. "Sentiment in the region is getting worse," said David Ng, who helps manage US$954 million at Hwang-DBS Asset Management Sdn in Kuala Lumpur. "First we had slowing US growth; now add on inflation fears. That makes for a bad combination." The MSCI Asia Pacific Index lost 2.9 percent to 152.28 as of 6:49pm in Tokyo, its sharpest decline since August 17, Bloomberg News said. The benchmark is set for its lowest annual gain

Global food prices were under further pressure as benchmark prices for cereals at much higher levels came into operation, making it almost inevitable that a second wave of food price inflation will hit the world's leading economies