FTSE ends higher, pares gains after weak U.S. data

By Kit Rees and Alistair Smout LONDON (Reuters) - Britain's benchmark share index on Friday closed higher on Friday but gave up much of the session's gains after weak U.S. jobs data fanned concerns over global growth. U.S. non-farm payrolls data showed that hiring stalled over the last two months and that wages fell in September, raising new doubts that the American economy is strong enough for the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates by the end of this year. "Sentiment still looks very, very weak and today's miserable jobs numbers from the U.S. are not helping matters at all," IG market analyst Chris Beauchamp said. Britain's FTSE 100 rose nearly 1 percent to 6,129.98 points, taking the index into positive territory for the week, and was up about 1.6 percent before the U.S. figures came out. The index posted its biggest quarterly decline since 2011 in the third quarter, which ended on Wednesday, although it has now risen for three straight sessions. Precious metals miners Randgold and Fresnillo were among the top risers, gaining 4.8 percent and 4.2 percent respectively as the price of gold rebounded from a two-week low after the U.S. payrolls data. Mining group Glencore rose 4.4 percent after sources told Reuters the company was in talks with a Saudi Arabian sovereign wealth fund and China's state-backed grain trader COFCO, along with Canadian pension funds, to sell a stake in its agricultural assets. Banking stocks also rose after Britain's financial regulator said it planned to impose a two-year deadline for customers to claim compensation for mis-sold loan insurance, drawing a line under Britain's costliest consumer finance scandal. "These liabilities have been casting something of a shadow over the sector, not least owing to the difficulties in quantifying their scale, plus the implications of recent judicial rulings," Trustnet Direct analyst Tony Cross said. Information services company Experian fell 3.8 percent after disclosing a data breach that exposed the personal information of some 15 million people who applied for service with T-Mobile US Inc. (Additional reporting by Lionel Laurent Editing by Louise Ireland)