Downbeat Chinese manufacturing data and political turmoil in Greece combined to send markets lower on Friday.
The FTSE 100 Index retreated 47.38 to 6320 as the Caixin flash manufacturing PMI racked up its worst August reading for six years.
Greek premier Alexis Tsipras officially resigned last night, with snap elections set for September 20 and endorsed by the European Union.
The European Central Bank did its best to lift spirits by confirming it had received its latest debt repayment from Athens overnight.
Otherwise, traders were hoping UK economic data would provide some much-needed cheer.
Connor Campbell at spread-betting firm Spreadex said: “News of a public sector net borrowing surplus could help mitigate some of the FTSE’s losses later in the morning, but investors probably shouldn’t hold their breath.”
The S&P 500 posted its worst daily fall since February 2014 on Thursday night, so traders were hoping for better news from the US August Markit manufacturing PMI later.
The gap between the ISM and PMI widened to 1pp in July which suggests some downside to the PMI. However, consensus expects a slight increase to 53.9.
Oil prices were on their way down again, with Brent crude dropping 1% to US$46.15 a barrel.
That sparked a 2.15p fall in BP’s share price to 367.45p. Royal Dutch Shell was 15.5p off at 1,737.5p.
In thin corporate news, GlaxoSmithKline’s (LON:GSK) stock shed 10p to 1,360.5p as it sold the rights to a multiple sclerosis treatment to rival Novartis for £1bn.
Rose Petroleum (LON:ROSE) leaked 11% to 0.2p as the US explorer said it would change its drilling programme to account for lower oil prices, but also pledged to keep its eye out for cheap acquisitions.
Investors tuned in to marine navigation technology group Software Radio Technology (LON:SRT) by 8% to 31.75p after it won a US$5mln contract from an unidentified US national authority for a national maritime domain management system, plus potential extra future phases.