Headline shares finish slightly higher after lower U.S. figures
Business Financial Newswire

CLOSING REPORT: Headline shares closed the day just in the black after an indecisive day driven by worse than expected jobless figures from the U.S. and broker updates on the likes of ENRC and Man Group.

At close the FTSE 100 was 7.52 points up at 5534.24.

LONDON MARKETS:
UK shares finished the day by dragging themselves to a minor gain, after worse than expected jobless figures from the States. Figures showed another 85,000 jobs were lost in December. Some predictions had expected a slight rise.

Miners were in focus this afternoon, with the sector leading the way during the afternoon session. Eurasian saw the biggest gains up 5% at 1034p. This was on the back of an upgraded target price from RBS.

This buoyed the sector with Rio Tinto, Vedanta Anglo American, Xstrata all seeing gains.

Legal & General was also amongst gainers finishing the day up 3% at 84.3p.

Other headline shares which finished the week in positive territory included ICAP, Invensys, Thomas Cook and Wolseley

Amongst losers on the day, Man Group never recover after a after a downgrade to 'equal-weight' from 'overweight' at Morgan Stanley. Man Finished the day down Man Finished the day down 2.3% at 319.8p.

Royal Bank of Scotland finished the day down 2% at 35.12p after announcing an agreement to sell certain fund management assets and contracts to Aberdeen Asset Management for 84.7m.

Michael Page International finished the day down just under 3% at 410p, despite a broker upgrade from sell to hold at Panmure Gordon. The recruitment firm had reported fourth-quarter gross profit of 90.6m, sequentially 8.3m or 10.1% higher than the third quarter, but a decrease of 23.7% against the last quarter of the prior year.

The LSE also saw losses falling back 2.21% to 707.5p.