FTSE 100 up 0.9%

Britain's top shares retraced some of their recent steep losses on Thursday in a broad-based rally, led higher by engineer IMI on a brighter outlook, according to Reuters. The FTSE 100 was up 57.87 points, or 0.9 percent, at 6,448.71 points by 0813 GMT following three days of losses, with IMI up 5.4 percent after saying it expects trading conditions to improve in the second half. According to Thomson Reuters StarMine, 90 percent of STOXX Europe 600 companies have announced second-quarter results so far, of which 55 percent have beaten or met forecasts. Miners also found favour, notching up a 1.7 percent rise after activity in top metals consumer China's manufacturing sector hit a four-month high in August. Antofagasta and Vedanta Resources, with respective gains of 2.9 percent and 2.2 percent, were among the best off, while Kazakhmys rose 1.1 percent despite posting a more than 35 percent drop in first-half core profit. Bond-buying schemes by the Fed and other major central banks have driven investors out of lower-yielding assets and into shares in the past year, helping the FTSE 100 rise roughly 23 percent since June 2012.