THE UK's banking giants helped drag the London market back into the black, with shares soaring at Barclays after it announced a bumper rise in profits.
The FTSE 100 Index rallied back from a near 60-point slump in the previous session, but failed to break through the 7,000 mark, trading up 28.48 points to 6,986.57.
Barclays was the biggest riser on the top-flight index as it drove home a 35% rise in pre-tax profits to £837 million in the third quarter.
Shares were up more than 4%, or 8.7p to 190.5p, with chief executive Jes Staley stating that the lender was still in the midst of selling down and disposing of its hinterland businesses in order to focus on its US and UK operations.
However, the bank said it would have to set aside an extra £600 million to meet compensation claims for mis-selling of payment protection insurance (PPI) in the third quarter, bringing its total provision over the past two quarters to £1 billion.
Lloyds Banking Group was also helping to prop up the market after investors sweetened to its third quarter results announced on Wednesday.
Underlying profit for the third quarter came in 3% down at just under £2 billion.
The update was followed on Thursday by the announcement that the Government had reduced its stake in Lloyds to less than 9% following a share sale.
Shares were up just shy of 3%, or 1.6p to 57.5p.
Across Europe, Germany's Dax was marginally ahead at 0.07% and the Cac 40 in France was down 0.02%.
The price of oil was 1.3% higher at 50.65 US dollars a barrel amid reports that energy ministers from Saudia Arabia had told Russia that it would be willing to cut its output by 4%.
In UK stocks, telecoms giant BT was struggling to make headway despite announcing a second-quarter boost to revenues and profits.
The group said adjusted revenue rose 1.1% to £6 billion, while pre-tax profit grew 24% to £873 million.
But shares were down 2% or 8.4p to 379.3p amid concerns over the company's pension deficit, which widened from £6.2 billion in June to £9.5 billion.
Software firm Misys has pulled the plug on its stock market listing becuuse of "market conditions".
The initial public offering (IPO) had been set to be the biggest UK flotation this year at around £5.5 billion, but instead Misys's plans join a spate of other stalled listings.
"Despite encouraging institutional support, Misys Group Ltd has decided not to proceed with its potential initial public offering at the current time due to market conditions", the firm said.
Misys - which provides software to the likes of Lloyds Banking Group, Barclays and HSBC as well as lenders worldwide - had planned to list in early November, four years after it was taken private by Vista Equity Partners in a £1.3 billion deal.
Misys is headquartered in the UK, but has around 2,000 customers worldwide.
The biggest risers on the FTSE 100 Index were Barclays up 8.7p to 190.5p, Lloyds Banking Group up 1.6p to 57.5p, ITV up 4.7p to 172.1p, Sky up 19.5p to 820.5p.
The biggest fallers on the FTSE 100 Index were Barratt Developments down 37p to 438.9p, AstraZeneca down 162.5p to 4,614.5p, Wolseley down 143p to 4,210p, Provident Financial down 77p to 2,964p.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here