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At 09:09 BST the index was down one per cent at 4,644.42 points, with Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) dropping 15 per cent after announcing a £1 billion loss for the opening half of 2009.
Lloyds Banking Group, HSBC and Barclays also fell, along with mining companies Kazakhmys, Xstrata, BHP Billiton, Anglo American and Rio Tinto, which were affected by the easing price of copper.
Defensive stocks and energy companies helped to limit the slide of the FTSE 100, with Royal Dutch Shell BP, Vodafone and AstraZeneca recording rises.
Henk Potts, strategist at Barclays Wealth, told the news source that the market is entering a period of consolidation in the short term after seeing a "tremendous rally" in recent weeks.
RBS said this morning that its loss was partly due to bad debts totalling £7.5 billion.
