Blue-chip index ends week on the up at 5,142.7
City shrugs off troubled giants’ mammoth losses
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Share bounce-backs for British Airways and the Royal Bank of Scotland helped to nudge the FTSE 100 index higher yesterday and offset disappointing data from across the Atlantic.
Airline BA’s latest plans for job cuts and savings helped shares up 7% while RBS added more than 5% amid signs of stabilisation at the business.
The wider Footsie held firm in positive territory, closing up 17.1 at 5,142.7, despite poor US employment data that weighed heavy on the key Dow Jones benchmark.
A US government report showed more jobs were lost during October than expected, with 190,000 US jobs cut last month; a worrying figure for the consumer spending outlook.
In London, BA rose 12.5p to 198.8p as cost cutting progress overshadowed worse-than-expected interim pre-tax losses.
Investors also overlooked more hefty operating losses at RBS in the third quarter to send the bank’s shares up 1.85p to 37.06p.
Analysts were encouraged that RBS had seen signs of “plateauing” bad-debt charges despite a further £3.2billion impairment hit in the third quarter.
Mark McCue, a divisional director of broker and wealth manager Brewin Dolphin in Aberdeen, noted that, on a relatively flat day, Scottish risers included Cairn Energy, up from 2% to £27.96, and Aberdeen Asset Management, which rose 2.2% to 132p.
