The benchmark for U.K. blue-chip stocks rose as much as 2.7% and hit its highest level in more than four months, before trimming gains and closing the day up 2.3%. On Friday the FTSE 100 gained 1.1% as investors cheered the Conservative majority win by Prime Minister Boris Johnson, which gives the leader a strongerto take Britain out of the European Union and thus remove a key pillar of uncertainty for markets.
Shares in companies exposed to the U.K. economy led gains at the beginning of the week, with financial-services firm Hargreaves Lansdown Plc and lenders Barclays Plc and Lloyds Banking Group Plc all rising more than 4%. UBS strategists said that the Dec. 12 election, Brexit and the completion of a final trade deal between the U.K. and the Europe have all been holding back U.K. stocks.
“The significant majority won by the Conservative party in the election moves capital markets on from that first risk and enables markets to focus into 2020 with a higher degree of certainty,” James Arnold, analyst at UBS, wrote in a note. Brexit has been a major overhang on U.K. stocks, with the FTSE 100 still the worst-performing major European index this year, and the market featuring among the biggest underweight positions for global asset managers, according to Bank of America’s fund manager surveys.
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