The top-share index started the day with a small step forward, with Coca-Cola HBC (LON:CCH) providing some fizz with its results.
The FTSE 100 rose 15 points to 5,987 in the first hour of trading, despite Asian markets taking a bath this morning.
Bottling company Coca-Cola HBC climbed to the top of the Footsie leader board, rising 56p to 1,430p, as it trumpeted top line growth and margin expansion in 2015.
Established markets returned to growth for the first time in five years, with good performances in Italy and Greece, the company said.
Standard Life’s (LON:SL.) results also got the thumbs-up, with the shares hardening 1.7% at 344.3p.
The insurer’s assets under administration grew 4% in 2015 to finish the year at £307.4bn, up from £296.6bn at the end of 2014, driven by net inflows of £6.3bn.
Among the mid-caps, hotels operator Millennium & Copthorne (LON:MLR) halved the dividend as it counted the cost of lowered growth expectations in the global economy and heightened security fears following terrorist attacks.
The shares gave up 21.8p at 368.2p as the company revealed a 5.9% year-on-year decline in revenue per available room (RevPAR), one of the key performance indicators in the hotels business, in the final quarter of 2015.
Things have got worse this year, with the first 31 days of trading in 2016 group seeing a 5.9% slump in RevPAR.
At the happier end of the FTSE 250 index was Essentra (LON:ESNT), up 11.1% on the back of a 21% increase in adjusted profit before tax for the injection moulding specialist.
The best performer in the whole market was Milestone Group (LON:MSG), which doubled in price after its Nexstar launched a new music streaming platform called MusicRoo.
The platform gathers music content from numerous suppliers, including Deezer and Spotify, and allows customers to purchase content.
AFC Energy (LON:AFC), the industrial fuel cell power company, charged 1.5p higher to 22p after signing a strategic engineering partnership and services agreement with German engineering consultancy planting.
Another small-cap cementing alliances was Cluff Natural Resources (LON:CLNR), which has extending its pact with oilfield support services titan Halliburton for another two years.
The arrangement secures Halliburton’s support for CLNR’s Southern North Sea gas portfolio, which comprises five licences, as well as its underground coal gasification (UCG) assets, although these are currently on the back-burner.
Cluff’s shares rose 6.4%.