UK stocks : FTSE 100 index adds 0.7 pct
UK stock closing: Britain's top share index reached a 3-week high on Thursday after gaining for a fourth straight session, driven by strength in commodity stocks after a return to growth in China's manufacturing sector.
However, trading volume was thin with U.S. markets shut for the Thanksgiving public holiday.
The Chinese HSBC Flash Manufacturing PMI rose to 50.4 in November, moving above the 50 mark that separates growth from contraction for the first time in 13 months and offering new signs of recovery in the world's No. 2 economy.
For too long now investors have been fretting over a hard landing for the Chinese economy and the potential that such a fast slowdown in growth would drag everyone else down with it, but recently there have been signs that the world's second largest economy could see growth heading higher again, Angus Campbell, Head of Market Analysis at Capital Spreads, said.
The mining and energy sectors together added about 7.5 points to the UK benchmark index, around a fifth of the total advance, cheered by prospects of stronger future demand from top commodity consumer China.
Among the miners, Xstrata rose 1.7 percent and commodities trader Glencore gained 2.0 percent as Europe's antitrust regulator announced it had approved the firms' planned $33 billion merger.
The deal, one of the biggest to date in the mining sector and which investors gave their backing to earlier this week, was cleared with more modest concessions than had been expected.
But while China's economy showed recovery, the picture in Europe remained gloomy, with
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