Wolseley, the world's biggest distributor of plumbing and heating products, said today that the fallout from the US housing crisis had severely weakened its profits, sending its shares falling.
UK-based Wolseley said in a trading update that pre-tax profit was expected to have dropped by about a third in the last five months of 2007, compared with the same period in 2006.
'For the five months ended 31 December 2007, the group's results continued to be affected by the worsening US housing market, low consumer confidence arising from global credit restrictions and the weakness of the US dollar,' Wolseley said in the statement.
