U.K. stocks were moving lower on Thursday, with fears around the Omicron coronavirus variant and warnings about inflation from major central banks weighing on sentiment.
The benchmark FTSE 100 dropped 38 points, or half a percent, to 7,130 after rising 1.6 percent on Wednesday.
Miners Anglo American, Antofagasta and Glencore fell 1-2 percent after the OECD warned sluggish growth could be further derailed by the new Covid-19 variant.
Chemicals and engineering firm Johnson Matthey gave up 1.7 percent and tech darling Darktrace tumbled 3.3 percent after index manager FTSE Russell confirmed that the companies will be ousted from the FTSE 100 index.
Oil & gas company Royal Dutch Shell rose about 1 percent after announcing the commencement of up to $1.5 billion of share buybacks.
Airline Wizz Air Holdings edged up slightly after data showed it carried more passengers in November than in the same month a year ago.
Ryanair was also modestly higher after releasing November traffic figures.
Electra Private Equity rallied 3.7 percent. The private equity investor said it would soon begin the process of moving from Britain’s main stock market to the junior AIM market.
FTSE 100 Dips On Virus Worries
2021-12-02 09:32:46
