The FTSE 100 index of Britain's leading shares was up 0.6 percent early on Thursday amidst a further batch of corporate results and with support from mining stocks on the back of higher metal prices, Reuters reported. At 0850 GMT, the blue-chip index edged 32.7 points higher at 5926.3 after touching 5,942.6 earlier in the session. The positive sentiment was boosted by U.S. and Asian stocks which rose overnight after technology shares supported and the Federal Reserve signalled its intention to keep cutting interest rates. Among leading UK gainers, Anglo-Dutch publisher Reed Elsevier rose 5.1 percent after it agreed to buy U.S. risk-management business ChoicePoint for $4.1 billion and announced a package of cost-saving targets for the next three years alongside its 2007 annual results. Kingfisher, Europe's biggest home-improvements retailer, was 0.5 percent up after it said lower fourth-quarter sales at its UK market leader B&Q had been partly offset by a strong performance in France and Poland. "It's a good day to come out with good results," said Howard Wheeldon, senior strategist at BGC Partners. "Good results are always what the market needs. The trouble is it doesn't always get them." "It is a very useful tonic ... but it doesn't change anything - it doesn't change any of the uncertainty. It does (however) start to beg the question, have the sellers done their business?" In other gainers, British defence company BAE Systems was 1.4 percent higher after it said it expected a further year of good growth in 2008 as it met forecasts with a 22 percent rise in underlying annual operating profit. But miners were the standout sector as base and precious metal prices rose. Vedanta, Antofagasta and Anglo American climbed between 1.6 percent and 3.3 percent.
