By Sara Sjolin, MarketWatch
LONDON (MarketWatch) -- U.K. stocks headed lower on Friday amid
a broader global selloff, ignited by reports of an Ebola case in
New York City and offsetting relief that U.K. GDP numbers didn't
miss expectations.
The FTSE 100 index slid 0.4% to 6,395.56, trimming its weekly
gain to 1.4%.
Tesco PLC dropped for a third straight day, down 1.6%. Shares of
the supermarket chain sank 6.6% on Thursday, after it said its
accounting error was bigger than initially estimated and revealed
Chairman Richard Broadbent is stepping down.
Travel shares and airlines were also on the decline, after
reports that a doctor who traveled back to New York from an
Ebola-stricken region of Africa tested positive for the virus on
Thursday. Concerns over the outbreak of the deadly virus also took
a toll on U.S. markets, with futures pointing to a weak open on
Wall Street.
In London, InterContinental Hotels Group PLC lost 1.6%, TUI
Travel PLC fell 1%, easyJet PLC dropped 0.8%, and International
Consolidated Airlines Group SA gave up 0.7%.
Pearson PLC dropped 2.8% after the publisher said its chief
financial officer, Robin Freestone, is stepping down before the end
of next year.
On the data front, the first estimate of third-quarter U.K.
gross domestic product came in as expected, showing the economy
expanded by 0.7%. Although the growth rate was a slowdown from the
0.9% in the second quarter, it still marked a seventh straight
period of growth. The pound (GBPUSD) climbed after the data,
trading at $1.6042, up from $1.6031 ahead of the data.
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