London’s top share index had a bumper session on Tuesday, buoyed by an excellent performance from BP, one of the capital’s biggest companies.
The oil firm saw its shares up nearly 5.5% on the day after it pleased investors with more shareholder returns and a higher-than-expected profit.
It was a strong introduction for new chief executive Murray Auchincloss, who was just named to the post on a permanent basis last month.
BP is the fifth largest company on the FTSE 100, so its performance helped lift the index, which closed up 68.15 points, or 0.90%, to end the day at 7,681.01.
“After four days of declines the FTSE 100 has finally seen a positive session today, closing higher for the first time in five days, briefly rising to its highest level since January 11 before slipping back,” said CMC Markets analyst Michael Hewson.
The company’s shares were doubtlessly also helped by the price of oil, which had risen to 1.12% to 78.86 dollars (£62.61) per barrel shortly after markets closed on Tuesday.
“The oil price, which declined amid demand concerns and ample supply over the past four consecutive trading days, recovered by around half a percentage point as tensions remain high in the Middle East,” said Axel Rudolph, senior market analyst at IG.
At the end of the day in Europe, Frankfurt’s Dax index was 0.76% higher while the Cac 40 in Paris had closed up 0.65%.
In New York a little while after markets had closed in Europe the S&P 500 was trading down 0.06% while the Dow Jones was 0.13% higher.
On currency markets, the pound had gained 0.44% against the dollar at 1.2589 and had risen 0.34% against the euro at 1.1709.
In company news, the Government moved a step closer to selling shares in NatWest to the public as the bank said the offering could happen as soon as June.
NatWest was nationalised by the then government of Gordon Brown during the financial crisis, when it was still called the Royal Bank of Scotland.
Since then, the Government has slowly sold down its shares in the lender and now owns around a third of the bank.
Shares in NatWest closed the day up 1.29%.
The biggest risers on the FTSE 100 were BP, up 24.8p to 478.95p, Weir Group, up 73p to 1,832.5p, Prudential, up 31.4p to 849.2p, JD Sports, up 3.7p to 110.75p, and Kingfisher, up 7.2p to 217.3p.
The biggest fallers on the FTSE 100 were Pearson, down 29p to 939.6p, BT, down 2.75p to 107.05p, Entain, down 23.8p to 966p, CocaCola HBC, down 35p to 2,290p, and 3i Group, down 25p to 2,316p.