Daily Times

LONDON: Britain’s top share index jumped on Monday as banking stocks surged after centrist Emmanuel Macron came out on top in the first round of France’s presidential election. The blue chip FTSE 100 index rose 1.9 percent to 7,246.34 points by 0857 GMT, on track for its biggest one-day jump since early December 2016 and outpacing the mid caps which were up 0.9 percent at a fresh record high. French centrist candidate Emmanuel Macron won the first round of voting, qualifying for a May 7 runoff alongside far-right leader Marine Le Pen. This quelled market worries about a potential anti-establishment shock in light of the UK’s Brexit vote last June and Donald’s Trump’s election in the US “There’s the upside… and that’s a pro-European stance which Macron has campaigned on and that’s going to be something that also cheers the markets. It delivers some potential upside in terms of what it could mean for Europe going forward,” Dean Turner, economist at UBS Wealth Management, said. UK banks jumped 2.4 percent, joining in with a broader risk-on rally among European lenders, which surged 4 percent. Shares in Barclays rose nearly 5 percent, while Standard Chartered was up 3.4 percent and Royal Bank of Scotland gained 2.8 percent. “It’s the pro-growth backdrop that we’re now starting to see come through rather than … ongoing austerity which is providing quite a significant shift with the outlook for the European banks, in particular with the French banks very much leading the way, which of course sees their UK-listed counterparts rally quite significantly today as well,” Dafydd Davies, partner at Charles Hanover Investments, said. Shares in home improvement firm Kingfisher were also among the biggest gainers, rising 3.7 percent.