London’s blue chip index climbed higher as investors digested the details of George Osborne’s Autumn statement.
It was an hour long speech packed with detail that will take some time to analyse fully said City watchers. Many of the proposals had been well flagged already and as expected there was a substantial affordable homes programme, changes to housing benefit and but a surpising U-turn on tax credit.
FTSE 100 climbed 62 points to 6,339 led by the housebuilders, which rose higher after the Chancellor sat down after early gains in teh morning.
Indded, all of the tops spots were occupied by the builders. Taylor Wimpey (LON:TW.) 5.2% higher to 187.3p, Persimmon (LON:PSN) 4.8% to 1,868p, and Barratt (LON:BDEV) 4.7% to 586p led the field.
Rolls-Royce (LON:RR.) got some respite from its spate of profit warnings as Osborne earmarked additional funds for the aerospace, while another £1bn was set aside for fracking.
Miners were again propping up the pile with Anglo American (LON;AAl) down a huge 8% to 418p as metal prices continued their steady decline.
Glencore (LON:GLEN) was another casualty, dropping 3.5% to 90.5p.
Away from the main index, Thomas Cook was the big story as the tour operator shrugged off recent terrible geopolitical events to post its first annual profit for five years.
Terror attacks and Tunisia and most recently Paris plus the bombing of a Russian passenger jet over Egypt, causing turmoil in the tourism sector has cast a cloud over the holiday business, but Cook said it had continued to grow nonetheless.
The tour operator swung to a pre-tax profit of £50mln in the year to September, having made a loss of £114mln the year before. Shares rose 8.5% to 106.7p.
Betfair (LON:BET) hiked its interim dividend after a strong first half ahead of its merger with rival bookie Paddy Power (LON:PAP).
The bookmaker has ramped up its dividend by some 67% to 15p from the 9p pay-out shareholders received this time last year, as sales and profits rose in the first half.
Betfair rose by 3.7% to 3,610p. Paddy Power rose 2% to €119.3.
Advanced materials and chemicals specialist Graphene Nanochem (LON:GRPH) has won a three year agreement with a Malaysia based agri-business, which is expected to generate £500,000 of revenues in its first year.
The firm also revealed on Wednesday it is in discussions over restructuring its bank debt. The Aim-listed shares jumped 17% to 12.3p.
Tungsten explorer W Resources (LON:WRES) jumped 25% as it was award development approval for a new mine in Spain.
It still needs to arrange the finance for the fast track mine it plans to build at the site in the south of Spain. Shares climbed 0.128p to 0.643p.