LONDON (Reuters) - UK stocks slipped on Monday as data showed the British economy slowed more sharply than expected in February, with industrials and consumer staples stocks weighing the most on the blue-chip FTSE 100 index.
The FTSE 100 fell 0.5% after logging its fifth straight weekly gain on Friday, while the domestically focused FTSE 250 midcap index declined 0.3%.
Tobacco firm British American Tobacco, Dove soap maker Unilever, Experian and drugmaker AstraZeneca dropped between 0.7% and 1.8%, dragging the blue-chip index lower.
Britain’s gross domestic product rose by 0.1% in February, missing the 0.3% rise forecast by economists in a Reuters poll and down from a 0.8% increase in January.
“This reading does indicate the UK economy is showing more signs of fragility than the U.S,” said Susannah Streeter, a senior investment and markets analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown.
The FTSE 100 has risen more than 3.7% so far this year, helped by gains in heavyweight commodity, consumer staples and banking stocks as oil and metal prices rallied on the Russia-Ukraine conflict and prospects grew of rapid policy tightening by global central banks to tame inflation.
Among individual stocks, Ascential climbed 4.5% after the events and analytics company confirmed a media report that it was in early stages of evaluating merits of a managed separation of its certain assets.