The Footsie ended in positive territory despite concerns about rising Covid cases and yesterday’s decision by the Bank of England to hike interest rates.
The FTSE 100 has closed up 0.1 per cent at 7,269.9 while the FTSE 250 rose 0.6 per cent to 22,780.38.
In company news, Britain’s Financial Conduct Authority has fined HSBC £63.95million for failings in its anti-money laundering processes.
The regulator said HSBC had made a string of failiures, including inadequate monitoring of money laundering and terrorist financing scenarios until 2014, and poor risk assessment of ‘new scenarios’ after 2016.
Meanwhile, ethical online grocer Farmdrop has gone out of business just a week before Christmas after struggling to keep up with an ‘increasingly competitive sector’.
Elsewhere, UK retail sales rose more strongly than expected last month, helped by Black Friday discounts, early Christmas shopping and an absence of lockdown restrictions that closed many stores a year earlier.
Retail sales rose by 1.4 per cent in November and were 4.7 per cent higher than a year earlier, the ONS said.
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The FCA said it had found that three key parts of HSBC’s transaction monitoring systems showed serious weaknesses over a period of eight years from 31 March 2010 to 31 March 2018
