UK FTSE buoyed by banks

A branch of Barclays bank in Canary Wharf, London. Barclays, Royal Bank of Scotland, Lloyds and Standard Chartered all rose 1.9-3.1 percent on Friday. File picture: Olivia Harris

A branch of Barclays bank in Canary Wharf, London. Barclays, Royal Bank of Scotland, Lloyds and Standard Chartered all rose 1.9-3.1 percent on Friday. File picture: Olivia Harris

Published Oct 2, 2015

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London - Britain's top share index rose on Friday as regulatory pressure eased on the country's banks, setting the index on track for a weekly rise.

Banks gained 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.

Royal Bank of Scotland, Barclays, Lloyds and Standard Chartered all rose 1.9-3.1 percent.

“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.

Britain's FTSE 100 was up 62.51 points, or 1 percent at 6,134.98 points by 0757 GMT, taking the index into positive territory for the week.

The FTSE 100 posted its biggest quarterly decline since 2011 in the third quarter, which ended on Wednesday, but it has now risen for three straight session.

The gains were broad-based, with only six stocks falling. Experian declined the most, dropping 4.4 percent and heading for its worst session in 18 months. The company disclosed a data breach that exposed the personal information of some 15 million people who applied for service with T-Mobile US.

“Undoubtedly a breach of this magnitude is a major setback, especially to a company that takes data security very seriously ... Experian's business is that of handling data, which makes this incident particularly embarrassing,” analysts at Barclays said in a note.

“T-Mobile is obviously reviewing its relationship with Experian. In itself the loss of one client is fairly immaterial but if it triggers other account reviews, it could become more significant.”

REUTERS

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