By Pranav Kashyap
(Reuters) -London’s blue-chip stock index edged higher on Thursday, buoyed by upbeat corporate earnings and economic data that bolstered bets of more rate cuts from the Bank of England.
The benchmark FTSE 100 closed up 0.13%, while the domestically focused FTSE 250 slipped 0.2%.
Unilever gained 2.9% after the consumer goods giant beat third-quarter underlying sales estimates, while Barclays rose 4.1% after the British bank reported a forecast-beating 18% rise in third-quarter profit.
A 2.9% jump in Anglo American lifted the industrial metal miners’ sector after the global miner maintained its copper and diamond production forecasts.
Optimism among British firms has sunk in October, according to two surveys published on Thursday, six days before finance minister Rachel Reeves tries to chart a way between raising taxes and boosting growth in the new government’s first budget.
A report said finance minister Rachel Reeves would change the measure of public debt that the government targets in next week’s budget in order to allow more borrowing for investment.
Traders are widely pricing in a 25-basis point rate cut by the BoE at its November and December meetings.
BoE’s interest rate-setter Catherine Mann welcomed a recent fall in inflation but added cooling of price growth still had “a long way to go” for the central bank to hit its 2% inflation target over the medium term.
Among other notable stock moves, IT services provider Softcat jumped 10% after it beat expectations for annual profit.
Bloomsbury Publishing, best known for publishing J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books, climbed 8.2% after it forecast a stronger-than-expected annual profit.
In contrast, Abrdn slumped 11.2% to the bottom of FTSE 250 after the fund manager reported deeper-than-expected outflows of client funds.
(Reporting by Pranav Kashyap and Nikhil Sharma in Bengaluru; Editing by Sonia Cheema and Sharon Singleton)
