(MENAFN- ProactiveInvestors) It really was a day of two halves.
Having sunk back in early deals FTSE100 soared at the end of the day to close up 2.41% at 6331.
The catalyst was some upbeat eurozone manufacturing data and good news for the banks after the majority of them passed the so called stress tests imposed on them by the Old Lady of Threadneedle street.
Oil companies were among the biggest gainers with () adding 6.3% and Shell up 3.22%.
Chris Beauchamp at IG Index said: "Oil companies and their oilfield services brethren continue to drive the London index and today was no different.
"Having borne the brunt of the selling yesterday such firms as and Shell were leading the market higher joined by Capita which has finally attracted the attention of bargain hunters after weeks of declines."
Mining stocks bore the brunt of selling with Randgold () and () topping the list of losers.
For the retail pundits out there interesting news was that Black Friday and Cyber Monday boosted online sales by 37% last month or put a different way that a whopping £12.1bn spent online. It was according to official stats.
Meanwhile telecoms giant BT.A () rose 1.86% after it confirmed it is in talks to buy Britain’s largest mobile network - EE - through a cash and shares deal worth £12.5bn.
The deal marks a return to the consumer mobile market after 13 years away for the former UK state telecoms firm.
In the small cap world () said the takeover of Aegean Metals Group was on target to complete by the middle of next month as it revealed drilling had begun on one of the latter’s projects.
The work on the Hot Maden gold-copper project in Artvin Province eastern Turkey is being carried out and fully funded by local partner Lidya.
The stock was one of the biggest risers in London adding over 17%.
Also nudging higher was e-commerce group blur () which continues to attract enterprise customers from around the world to its platform even in the traditionally quiet month of December.
In the UK utility company South West Water has signed up while on the European mainland global aerospace specialist Thales is now using the crowd-sourcing platform.
Gulf Keystone Petroleum () went around 16% higher after the Kurdistan based oil firm revealed it stepping up production to its 40000 barrels per day target.
It comes with the completion of a three-well programme at the Shaikan field.
The new wells as they come online will lift production from the current range of 23000 to 25000 barrels per day to 40000.
"Despite numerous challenges earlier this year Gulf Keystone has completed the work on the three additional producers on time” said chief executive John Gerstenlauer.
However () shares lost ground despite chief executive Nick Warrell saying he was ‘very pleased’ with the better than expected maiden resource estimate for the Ferensola iron ore deposit in Sierra Leone.
The total JORC-compliant resource was 514mln tonnes at 31.8% iron with an easily accessible oxide component of 55.5mln tonnes at 45.39% iron. Sula set itself the task of discovering 500mln tonnes.
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