Financial stocks help Britain's FTSE to bounce back

* Blue (OTC BB: BUES - news) -chip FTSE 100 (NasdaqGS: Z - news) index gains 0.9 pct

* Banks top leaderboard after recent slump

* Tesco (Hanover: TCO.HA - news) shares advance on industry report

By Atul Prakash

LONDON, Feb 10 (Reuters) - Britain's top share index climbed higher on Wednesday, with Tesco gaining after an industry sales report and banks bouncing back on bargain-hunting after three straight sessions of losses.

The blue-chip FTSE 100 index rose 0.9 percent after falling more than 1 percent in the previous session. The benchmark index is still down nearly 9 percent so far this year.

The UK banking index rose 1.1 percent, the top sectoral gainer, after slumping more than 8 percent since Monday on broader concerns about the health of the sector and the pace of global economic recovery.

Shares (Berlin: DI6.BE - news) in Barclays (LSE: BARC.L - news) , HSBC, Standard Chartered and RBS (LSE: RBS.L - news) were up 1.6 percent to 2.8 percent.

"Financial stocks in general are finding some support after the torrid start to the week, but this looks more like opportunistic bargain hunters dipping a toe in the water rather than a wholesale shift in sentiment," Tony Cross, analyst at Trustnet Direct, said.

Tesco shares rose 3.7 percent after a report by researcher Kantar Worldpanel said the company showed signs of improvement, with its best outcome since September last year.

Sainsbury (Amsterdam: SJ6.AS - news) 's gained 1 percent after the report said the British supermarket continued to outperform rivals in the early weeks of the year, providing reassurance for investors ahead of the takeover of Argos-owner Home Retail.

Shares in Worldpay rose 3.3 percent after Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS - news) raised its stance on the stock of to British payments processor to "buy" from "neutral".

Hikma Pharmaceuticals slumped 12.5 percent after saying it would now pay $535 million less than an earlier offer to buy Boehringer Ingelheim's U.S (Other OTC: UBGXF - news) . generic drugs business after due diligence revealed that the unit's revenue for 2015 would be lower than it expected.

ARM Holdings (LSE: ARM.L - news) fell 4.4 percent even after the British chip designer, whose technology powers smartphones, reported a 17 percent rise in fourth-quarter profit.

"What's not to like? Maybe management's confidence in the semi-conductor industry is being questioned after Apple (LSE: 0R2V.L - news) 's warning on China stress and rival Imagination Technology's profits warning earlier this week," said Mike van Dulken, head of research at Accendo Markets.

"Perhaps global recessionary fears are too much to discount given a mature and slowing high-end smartphone market starting to eat into margins and hopes too high that connected devices can ride to the rescue." (Reporting by Atul Prakash; Editing by Jeremy Gaunt)