In the United States, Congress looked increasingly unlikely to meet a deadline to agree on US$900 billion in fresh Covid-19 aid and instead may pass a third stopgap spending bill to keep the government from shutting down at midnight.
"Markets are heading into the weekend with these two big unknowns. Investors may not get to react until Monday morning because the answer, especially for Brexit, might be between Sunday and Monday morning," Mr Campbell said.Optimism around vaccine rollouts in Britain and potential roll outs in other part of Europe before the year-end, as well as progress in US stimulus talks underpinning hopes of a global economic recovery, lifted sentiment this week.
Travel and leisure stocks slipped on Friday, with British Airways-owner IAG down 2.1 per cent after a media report that it had agreed to buy Spanish carrier Air Europa for 500 million euros . In M&A moves, Dutch health technology firm Philips rose 1.7 per cent after it agreed to buy US cardiac diagnostics and monitoring firm BioTelemetry in a deal worth US$2.8 billion.
Finnish paint producer Tikkurila soared more than 60 per cent after US firm PPG Industries made an offer to buy the company for a total of 1.1 billion euros.For daily updates on weekdays and specially selected content for the weekend. Subscribe to