Britain's top share index touched a two-month high on Friday, spurred by international monetary stimulus after China cut interest rates and as investors bet on further easing from the European Central Bank. The People's Bank of China also cut the reserve requirement ratio for most big banks.
-- Miners rally on further stimulus measures
-- TalkTalk falls after cyber attack
"Any stimulus by the Chinese is met by some positivity in equities. It's just a cherry on the top to Mario Draghi comments yesterday," Jonathan Roy, advisory investment manager at Charles Hanover Investments, said. The blue-chip FTSE 100 was up 1.1 percent at 6,444.08 points at the close, touching its highest level since August 19 earlier in the trading session. Miners Glencore, Anglo American, BHP Billiton, Antofagasta and Rio Tinto rose between 1.5 percent to 2.4 percent after the move by China, the world's biggest consumer of metals.
Shares in China-exposed luxury goods retailer Burberry, up 4 percent, were also boosted. "Any improvement in the prospects of China is seen as having a direct impact on Burberry as much as on the big mining companies," Ian Forrest, investment research analyst at The Share Centre, said.
Builders' merchant Travis Perkins, which slumped on a disappointing earnings update on Thursday, gained 5.1 percent on bargain-hunting, traders said. Drugmaker Shire rose 4.4 percent after its Q3 earnings comfortably beat market expectations and it said that it is still pursuing its bid to buy US company Baxalta. On the downside, shares in William Hill fell nearly 8 percent after the mid-cap British bookmaker said it expected full-year operating profit to be near the lower end of analysts' expectations following a weak third quarter.
Talk Talk, another FTSE 250 company, fell 4.4 percent after it said it had received a ransom demand from an unidentified party claiming responsibility for a cyber attack that could have led to the theft of personal data from its more than 4 million customers.