Britain's FTSE 100 fell on Friday, on course to snap three sessions of gains at the end of a volatile week's trade, as concern over the political response to sluggish global growth weighed on investor sentiment, Reuters reported. A two-day meeting of G7 finance chiefs starting Friday was the next focus for markets after U.S. Federal Reserve chief Ben Bernanke overnight gave no indication of fresh stimulus plans for the U.S. economy, weighing on U.S. stocks after London's close. The bearish end to Wall Street's market day on Thursday was followed by U.S. President Obama's presentation of his jobs creation scheme, which was short on detail and faces further political hurdles. U.S. stocks ended down around 1 percent. The macro story continued to drive sentiment, said Gerard Lane, equity strategist at Shore Capital. A sales trader at a leading European investment bank said Bernanke couldn't be expected "to come out and start banging the drum about QE," ahead of the next Fed meeting. UK lenders were among the hardest hit in the morning session, with Barclays , Lloyds Banking Group and Royal Bank of Scotland all down around 4 percent ahead of the Independent Commission on Banking making its final proposals on Monday for reforming the sector. The government-commissioned report is expected to say banks should split their retail and investment banking operations up, although the move could hit profits, particularly at RBS and Barclays, which have the biggest investment banking units. While banks led sectoral fallers, Britain's biggest listed motor insurer Admiral led fallers for the second session in a row, hit by news of a UK government move to ban lawyers paying insurers for referring accident victims. Airlines group IAG also made it into the top-five fallers' list, down 2.6 percent, weighed by bearish broker comments. At 0919 GMT, the FTSE 100 was down 0.8 percent at 5,305.96 points, after closing late Thursday up 0.4 percent. The index is up 0.1 percent in the week, but down 1.8 percent in September and 10.1 percent in the year to date. On the upside, however, Tullow Oil led UK and European blue-chip gainers after it said it had struck oil offshore French Guiana. Its shares were up 12.4 percent in volume two and a half times the 90-day daily average mid-way through the morning session. A move back into defensives was also helping stem losses, traders said, with Imperial Tobacco among the top gainers, up 1.1 percent. -- SPA
