LONDON: London stocks ended Thursday on the back foot as earning updates from firms like Rolls-Royce underlined the extent of corporate damage inflicted by the coronavirus pandemic, while Federal Reserve Chief Jerome Powell’s speech brought few surprises.

The blue-chip FTSE 100 fell 0.8%, with banks, mining companies and energy stocks leading the declines.

Rolls-Royce slipped 1.2% to a more than three-week low after sinking to a first-half underlying loss before tax of 3.2 billion pounds ($4.2 billion). The wider aero and defence index lost 0.4%.

Trillions of dollars in stimulus has sent global equity benchmarks back to their pre-pandemic highs, but the UK’s FTSE 100 is still about 21% below that level as the economy struggles to recover from a record crash in the second quarter.

Data on Thursday showed British car production rose sharply in July but is still well below last year’s level, while another set of figures showed firms in the services industry cut jobs rapidly in the three months to August to ride out the pandemic.

The mid-cap FTSE 250 edged 0.1% lower but most of its declines were contained as specialist mortgage lender OneSavings Bank surged 15.7% on reporting a 2% rise in its underlying net loan book.

Hays Plc, one of the world’s biggest recruitment agencies fell 0.4% as it posted a 12% fall in annual net fees, while advertising company WPP rose 6.5% as it resumed its dividend after beating dire forecasts for second-quarter trading.—Reuters