By Carla Mozee, MarketWatch
U.K. stocks pulled out a win Wednesday, as a surge in biopharma company Shire PLC on deal buzz helped the blue-chip market shake off downside pressure emanating from tech stocks worldwide.
How markets moved
The FTSE 100 index /zigman2/quotes/210598409/delayed UK:UKX -0.14% finished up by 0.6% at 7,044.74, led by utility shares, but commodity-related sectors led decliners. On Tuesday, it jumped 1.6% and ended a four-session losing streak.
But with one full trading session left in March, the blue-chip benchmark was still poised to fall 2.6% for the month, and has lost more than 8% this year.
See: Brace for more ‘poor’ action by U.K. stocks, says world’s largest asset manager
The pound /zigman2/quotes/210561263/realtime/sampled GBPUSD +0.1697% bought $1.4109, down from $1.4159 late Tuesday in New York.
What drove markets
The FTSE 100 staged a turnaround after falling as much as 1.1% during the session. That improvement came largely on the back of Shire shares , which rallied as much as 26% after Japanese biopharma Takeda Pharmaceutical Corp. /zigman2/quotes/201302442/delayed JP:4502 -0.96% said it’s considering making an offer for its rival. Shire shares closed up 15.6%, the strongest percentage gain since June 2014.
Ratings upgrades for Burberry Group PLC and a couple of other companies by large investment banks also helped move the benchmark into positive territory.
But U.K., European /zigman2/quotes/210599654/delayed XX:SXXP -0.03% and Asian /zigman2/quotes/210597971/delayed JP:NIK +0.37% /zigman2/quotes/210598030/delayed HK:HSI +1.05% blue-chips had a rough start following the rout in tech stocks that led a sharp downturn on Wall Street on Tuesday and left the Nasdaq Composite Index /zigman2/quotes/210598365/realtime COMP +2.00% down 2.9%. The tech-heavy Nasdaq was in the red during Wednesday’s session.
Investors dumped tech sector shares, which have been at the forefront of Wall Street’s run higher for more than a year, on various regulatory concerns including for electric car maker Tesla Inc. /zigman2/quotes/203558040/lastsale TSLA +4.73% , and news that the U.S. is considering a ban on Chinese investment in certain sensitive technologies.
By contrast, reports that the U.S. and China are conducting behind-the-scenes trade talks helped drive a surge in London-listed blue chips on Tuesday, as concerns about a global trade war abated.
Opinion: Who gets hurt in a trade war? Mostly not China
But the FTSE 100 appeared able to shake off tech worries faster than other markets as the tech sector has a weighting of just 0.62% on index, with only two components in the group, according to FactSet data.
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