Royal Bank of Scotland is continuing its recovery in advance of the closing tomorrow of its £12bn rights issue.
Helped by an upgrade from Citigroup - which has moved from hold to buy, with a 300p target - the bank's shares climbed 9.5p to 259p. Most of the other banks have also moved higher, notably HBOS, which is up 17.5p to 358p. However Alliance & Leicester, which had been lifted earlier this week by hopes that private equity groups might turn their attention to the mortgage bank, fell back 13p to 399.5p as the speculation faded.
Miners were in decline again as metal prices continued to fall and Goldman Sachs reduced its ratings on several of the companies. Lonmin lost 104p to £33.50 and Anglo American fell 97p to £33.04. The platinum specialist Johnson Matthey dropped 76p to £19.63 on profit taking after its full year results.
The Bank of England's decision to leave interest rates unchanged surprised no one and had little impact on the market. So, helped by the banks' performance, the FTSE 100 ended 25.2 points higher at 5995.3.
Tomorrow sees the release of the US non-farm payroll figures, which can usually be guaranteed to cause some excitement for investors.
