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FTSE climbs higher after China rate cut, BOE QE

LONDON - Britain’s top share index extended gains after a surprise move by China to cut interest rates, which overshadowed the widely-expected quantative easing programme announced by the Bank of England and a rate cut by the European Central Bank.

China surprised the market by cutting interest rates for the second time in two months, boosting appetite for riskier assets, such as commodity-linked stocks and global engineering companies.

“We expected China would further ease its policy, although the timing is earlier than expected, which is good news and will support appetite for risk assets,” said Gerard Lane, strategist of Shore Capital.

He added that the QE move by the Bank of England also boosted the market sentiment and would probably help sustain a rally, which began last Friday after EU leaders agreed crisis-fighting emergency actions.

The European Central Bank cut its main interest rate to a record low of 0.75 percent and its deposit rate to zero on Thursday to help tackle the euro zone crisis that threatens to push the bloc’s deteriorating economy back into recession.

The Bank of England launched a third round of monetary stimulus on Thursday, announcing it would restart its printing presses and buy 50 billion pounds of asset purchases with newly created money to help the economy out of recession.

The BoE has bought 325 billion pounds of government bonds to date, and the purchases announced on Thursday take this total to 375 billion.

At 1127 GMT, the FTSE 100 index was up 24.28 points, or 0.43 percent, at 5708.70, having shed 0.1 percent on Wednesday to snap a three-session rally of around 3.5 percent.

GKN was the top blue-chip gainer, adding 11.04 percent after the British engineering group agreed to buy the aerospace division of the world’s number two truck maker Volvo VOLVb.ST for 633 million pounds ($986 million).