By Carla Mozee, MarketWatch
LONDON (MarketWatch) -- U.K. stocks moved slightly higher
Thursday, with shares of Standard Chartered PLC gaining as the bank
said it has named a new chief executive.
The FTSE 100 picked up 0.1% to 6,943.70.
The best performer was Standard Chartered PLC , whose shares
climbed 2.7% after the Asia-focused lender said Chief Executive
Peter Sands will step down in June after eight years in the role.
He will be succeeded by Bill Winters, who once served as the co-CEO
of J.P. Morgan Investment Bank.
It is now "the right moment to hand over to new leadership,"
said Sands in a statement. "It has been my privilege to lead the
people of Standard Chartered through a period of extraordinary
turbulence and growth." Sands had been under pressure to step down
as profit has fallen and shares have struggled.
On the losing end of the FTSE 100, EasyJet PLC was down 1.5% as
the budget airline's shares traded without dividend rights.
Reed Elsevier PLC shares were also down, losing 4.6% as the
publishing and exhibitions company posted a fall in full-year net
profit and revenue
(http://www.marketwatch.com/story/reed-elsevier-full-year-profit-falls-2015-02-26-2485424).
The second reading of fourth-quarter U.K. gross domestic product
is due at 9:30 a.m. London time, or 4:30 a.m. Eastern Time. The
first reading, released by the Office for National Statistics last
month, showed growth slowed to 0.5% in the final quarter of 2014.
Ahead of the release, the pound (GBPUSD) bought $1.5520, compared
with $1.5530 late Thursday in New York.
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