Yahoo Finance FTSE Hits 7,000 For First Time In History
The FTSE 100 Index has risen to more than 7,000 points for the first time in its history.
World markets (Xetra: 4WM.DE - news) were cheered by a small recovery in the price of oil as well as signs of a breakthrough in the Greek debt crisis.
London's top-flight index was also buoyed this week by the prospect of UK and US interest rates remaining lower for longer.
It closed at 7,022.5 as the price of a barrel of Brent crude edged above $55 - still less than half its value last summer.
The FTSE had been on the brink of the landmark after a Budget-inspired rally earlier in the week.
It has never before breached the 7,000 mark, which makes the combined value of London's top companies nearly £1.8tr.
In February it passed a record high of 6,950, set at the time of the dotcom boom in 1999.
Peter Cameron, assistant fund manager at Ecclesiastical Investment Management, said: "After 15 long and bumpy years, the FTSE 100 has finally clawed its way back to the levels of the late 1990s and unlike then, when the market was gripped by an irrational technology bubble, this new high should not cause alarm amongst investors.
"A backdrop of inflation tailwinds from declining food and fuel prices, falling unemployment and signs of wage growth finally returning, create a benign outlook for the UK economy in 2015."
The rise boosted Royal Dutch Shell (Xetra: R6C1.DE - news) and BP - which feature in many UK pension funds - by about 1%, with exploration firm Tullow Oil (LSE: TLW.L - news) climbing nearly 3% and rival BG Group (LSE: BG.L - news) up 2%.
Irish cement firm CRH advanced 6% after Holcim (Other OTC: HCMLF - news) and Lafarge (Paris: FR0000120537 - news) salvaged a planned multi-billion-pound merger to create the world's biggest cement firm.
CRH (NYSE: CRH - news) has agreed to buy €6.5bn worth of assets, which would give anti-trust clearance for the Holcim-Lafarge deal.
The new assets would transform CRH into the world's third biggest building materials supplier.
UK bank TSB also rose 2.2% after agreeing to a £1.7bn takeover by Spanish lender Banco Sabadell in one of the biggest cross-border banking deals since the financial crisis.
Lloyds, which was ordered to sell TSB as a condition of its £20bn bailout during the banking meltdown of 2008, agreed to sell a 9.99% stake to Sabadell. It also says it will sell its remaining 40.01%.
