London’s FTSE 100 was down 0.7% at 6,898.21 in afternoon trade on Friday.
Pharmaceutical group GSK and Haleon – the consumer healthcare business it spun off earlier this year – were the top two gainers on the index.
GSK said earlier that Japan’s medicines regulator has agreed to review its vaccine candidate for respiratory disease.
The company said its application for its respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) older adult vaccine candidate has been accepted for review by the Japanese Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare.
Going the other way, retailers JD Sports and Frasers Group were both under the cosh after data from the Office for National Statistics showed that retail sales tumbled in September, weighed down by soaring prices, the cost-of-living crisis and the state funeral of Queen Elizabeth II.
Sales volumes fell 1.4% in September, making them 1.3% below February 2020, pre-Covid. Analysts had been expecting a decline of around 0.5%.
Hotels chain IHG slumped even as it reported a rise in third-quarter hotel room revenue, driven by strong demand as business and leisure travel recovered from the Covid pandemic. The company also said chief financial officer Paul Edgecliffe-Johnson will step down in six months to join gambling group Flutter.
FTSE 100 – Risers
Haleon (HLN) 274.70p 1.18%
GSK (GSK) 1,379.80p 1.08%
Unilever (ULVR) 3,946.00p 0.93%
Flutter Entertainment (CDI) (FLTR) 10,800.00p 0.75%
Glencore (GLEN) 486.90p 0.45%
Tesco (TSCO) 208.30p 0.43%
Reckitt Benckiser Group (RKT) 5,948.00p 0.37%
Severn Trent (SVT) 2,337.00p 0.30%
Shell (SHEL) 2,324.50p 0.19%
Aveva Group (AVV) 3,154.00p 0.13%
FTSE 100 – Fallers
Auto Trader Group (AUTO) 488.00p -5.83%
JD Sports Fashion (JD.) 95.32p -4.97%
Centrica (CNA) 66.04p -4.62%
Frasers Group (FRAS) 619.50p -4.25%
InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG) 4,398.00p -3.62%
RS Group (RS1) 927.00p -3.49%
Rentokil Initial (RTO) 493.00p -3.37%
Persimmon (PSN) 1,202.00p -2.99%
Harbour Energy (HBR) 370.20p -2.91%
Spirax-Sarco Engineering (SPX) 10,270.00p -2.70%
