(Reuters) -London’s benchmark index slipped on Monday after rounding off four weeks of gains, as caution prevailed ahead of much-awaited U.S.-China talks later in the day.<\/p>\n
The FTSE 100 was down 0.3%, while the mid-cap FTSE 250 was up 0.4%.<\/p>\n
Top officials from the U.S. and China are scheduled to meet in London for talks that investors hope will indicate some progress in de-escalating trade tensions between the world’s two biggest economies.<\/p>\n
The talks follow a phone call between the presidents of the two countries last week, in which they agreed to hold more talks amid a global trade war that has escalated from tit-for-tat tariffs to export controls.<\/p>\n
British finance minister Rachel Reeves will hold a meeting with Chinese vice premier He Lifeng, without indulging any details on the agenda.<\/p>\n
Most sectors were lower, with aerospace and defence stocks leading losses. They were down 0.9%, extending declines to a third session. Pharma stocks dipped 0.8%, as investors looked to book some profits.<\/p>\n
London stocks rounded off the previous week with gains, after a U.S. jobs report allayed concerns of an economic slowdown in the world’s biggest economy, despite a U.S. tariff roller coaster.<\/p>\n
Among stocks, WPP slipped about 2% to bottom the FTSE 100. The ad group said its chief executive officer Mark Read would retire by the end of 2025.<\/p>\n
Spectris soared 70% to top the FTSE 250 after the scientific instruments maker said it has received a takeover proposal from private equity firm Advent valuing its shares at 37.35 pounds per share.<\/p>\n
Alphawave jumped 24% after U.S. chipmaker Qualcomm agreed to acquire to semiconductor company for about $2.4 billion.<\/p>\n
M&G Investments gained 1.7% as UBS upgraded the stock to ‘buy’ from ‘neutral’.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Purvi Agarwal in Bengaluru; Editing by Maju Samuel)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Reuters) -London’s benchmark index slipped on Monday after rounding off four weeks of gains, as caution prevailed ahead…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":170253,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7757],"tags":[53911,748,393,1880,4884,257,70961,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-170252","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-london","8":"tag-benchmark-index","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-england","11":"tag-ftse-100","12":"tag-great-britain","13":"tag-london","14":"tag-pharma-stocks","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114653461552212172","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170252","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=170252"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170252\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/170253"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=170252"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=170252"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=170252"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}