London equities markets were up on Friday but closed lower over the week, with the FTSE 100 adding 0.36 for the day but dropping 1.2 percent for the week to end at 5,879.3 and the FTSE 250 up 0.32 Friday but down by 1 percent on the week to 9.606.3.
Miners were down as investors worried that China will say on Monday that it has a large trade surplus, leading to a tightening of monetary policy there. Antofagasta fell 2 percent to 461p, wile Vedanta Resources declined by 3 percent to £13.21.
GCap Media dropped 4 percent to 200¾p when Merrill Lynch cut its earnings forecast for the company by 42 percent.
Among pharmaceuticals companies, AstraZeneca was 1.3 percent lower to £33 on a downgrade to “hold” from Citigroup on valuation concerns.
In the oil sector, Regal Petroleum added 7.2 percent to 119½p, while Xtract Energy was up 32 percent to 10.3p on a new discovery of a shale deposit in Australia that could yield up to 1.6 billion barrels of oil.
The biggest winner among blue-chips was Next. The fashion retailer gained 3.8 percent to £17.28 on bids rumors, even though analysts were skeptical of the talk.
