Source: Sharecast
The FTSE 100 closed up 0.4% at 10,902.56.
The big news was a global Microsoft outage, which began around 1800 GMT on Thursday. The issue affected Outlook.com, OneDrive, OneNote, Microsoft To Do, Teams, and Microsoft 365 for the web.
The US tech giant said on Friday that it was seeing "signs of sustained recovery throughout the affected environment, and while our investigation into the underlying root cause is ongoing, we’re continuing to monitor the impacted services to verify service health levels remain stable".
There was no immediate explanation for the outage. However, Microsoft’s executive vice president of Copilot, agents and platform, Charles Lamanna, posted overnight on X that there was "no indication this is the result of a malicious or cyber activity".
Meanwhile, Nvidia remained in focus as reports suggested that Jensen Huang - who resigned as chief executive on Thursday - had extramarital affairs with two employees at the US tech giant, as well as his affair with a suspected Chinese spy.
Kathleen Brooks, research director at XTB, said: "The market narrative has moved on from Jensen Huang and his liaisons with customers and employees, and has turned towards Microsoft. The company is experiencing the world’s biggest ever service outage, with 999 services affected. At this stage there is no suspicion of a cyber attack or malice that has caused the outage and it is instead down to ‘elevated load’, ie, too much compute is being used, which is knocking out servers and has a domino effect.
"This is the third Microsoft outage in a year, and raises questions about whether Microsoft can service its AI enhanced products." Brooks added that "the market does not appear overly worried about the situation".
In equity markets, Aviva rallied after saying it expects earnings per share to grow broadly in line with its 11% target this year after general insurance premiums rose 19% to almost £12bn in the first nine months of the year driven by Direct Line and the new home insurance partnership with Nationwide.
Shell and BP were among the gainers as oil prices remained elevated, while Land Securities edged up as it reiterated full-year guidance after interim rental income rose by more than expected.
Asos shot higher after an upgrade to ‘buy’ from ‘add’ at Peel Hunt, which lifted the price target to 560p from 475p.
On the downside, 3i Group slid, having gained on Thursday after the private equity investor reported further growth at its largest portfolio company, Action, and announced a fresh £750m share buyback programme.
Dr Martens was on the back foot after broker Peel Hunt downgraded shares of the iconic bootmaker to ‘add’ from ‘buy’ and slashed the price target to 70p from 95p.
Market Movers
FTSE 100 (UKX) 10,902.56 0.36%
FTSE 250 (MCX) 24,805.41 -0.45%
techMARK (TASX) 6,221.92 -0.41%
FTSE 100 - Risers
Centrica (CNA) 160.65p 3.81%
Aviva (AV.) 764.80p 3.52%
Associated British Foods (ABF) 2,053.00p 2.34%
Relx plc (REL) 3,069.00p 1.95%
Autotrader Group (AUTO) 576.80p 1.91%
Imperial Brands (IMB) 2,967.00p 1.71%
SSE (SSE) 2,732.00p 1.60%
Shell (SHEL) 3,719.50p 1.49%
Tesco (TSCO) 560.20p 1.49%
BP (BP.) 574.90p 1.39%
FTSE 100 - Fallers
3i Group (III) 2,645.00p -2.40%
Antofagasta (ANTO) 3,145.00p -2.24%
Computacenter (CCC) 4,878.00p -1.89%
Weir (WEIR) 2,348.00p -1.68%
Anglo American (AAL) 3,765.00p -1.65%
Scottish Mortgage Inv Trust (SMT) 1,489.50p -1.55%
Pershing Square Holdings Ltd NPV (PSH) 3,932.00p -1.40%
ICG (ICG) 1,855.00p -1.33%
Investec (INVP) 635.50p -1.24%
Rolls-Royce Holdings (RR.) 1,350.60p -1.18%
FTSE 250 - Risers
B&M European Value Retail (BME) 351.00p 4.03%
Applied Nutrition (APN) 315.50p 3.78%
Rightmove (RMV) 582.20p 3.41%
ASOS (ASC) 476.00p 2.92%
Globaldata (DATA) 67.00p 2.29%
Domino's Pizza Group (DOM) 232.60p 2.02%
THG (THG) 38.56p 1.96%
Pantheon Infrastructure (PINT) 119.20p 1.88%
Hansa Investment Company Limited (DI) (HAN) 330.00p 1.85%
Cranswick (CWK) 5,620.00p 1.63%
FTSE 250 - Fallers
WH Smith (SMWH) 374.00p -6.17%
Vistry Group (VTY) 237.80p -4.80%
Oxford Instruments (OXIG) 2,552.00p -3.48%
Bytes Technology Group (BYIT) 433.80p -3.39%
Polar Capital Technology Trust (PCT) 571.50p -3.38%
Allianz Technology Trust (ATT) 636.00p -3.35%
QinetiQ Group (QQ.) 484.80p -3.04%
RHI Magnesita N.V. (DI) (RHIM) 2,720.00p -3.03%
Ceres Power Holdings (CWR) 257.00p -2.87%
Discoverie Group (DSCV) 788.00p -2.84%