LONDON: Britain's top share index on Friday gave up much of the gains made earlier in the session, knocked back by weak US jobs data which fanned concerns over global growth.
US non-farm payrolls data showed on Friday that hiring stalled over the last two months and that wages fell in September, raising new doubts that the American economy is strong enough for the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates by the end of this year.
"Sentiment still looks very, very weak and today's miserable jobs numbers from the US are not helping matters at all," Chris Beauchamp, market analyst at IG, said. Britain's FTSE 100 was up 0.7 percent at 6,114.80 points going into the close of trading.
The FTSE 100 posted its biggest quarterly decline since 2011 in the third quarter, which ended on Wednesday, although it has now risen for three straight sessions.
Yet even though the FTSE was in positive territory on Friday, it lost ground after the weak U.S data.
The index had been up by around 1.6 percent before the US figures were released, but then gave up much of those gains.
Precious metals miners Randgold and Fresnillo were the top risers, up 3.7 percent and 3.6 percent respectively as the price of gold rebounded from a two-week low after the US payrolls data.
Banks also rose after Britain's financial regulator said it planned to impose a two-year deadline for customers to claim compensation for mis-sold loan insurance, drawing a line under Britain's costliest consumer finance scandal.
"These liabilities have been casting something of a shadow over the sector, not least owing to the difficulties in quantifying their scale, plus the implications of recent judicial rulings," said Tony Cross, a market analyst at Trustnet Direct.
Information services company Experian declined the most on Friday, dropping 4 percent and heading for its worst session in 16 months. Experian disclosed a data breach that exposed the personal information of some 15 million people who applied for service with T-Mobile US Inc.
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