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Having kicked off Thursday’s session in negative territory, UK markets were unfazed by a smaller-than-expected boost to the Bank of England’s quantitative easing programme and it took a strong start on Wall Street to call investors to action.

The FTSE 100 index closed up 17.8 points or 0.4% at 5,125.6—markedly higher than its intraday low of 5,036.9, while the FTSE 250 index also recouped morning losses to settle 27.7 points or 0.3% ahead at 9,020.4. Uplift came in the afternoon from US benchmark indices, which rallied around 2.0% on average following a greater-than-forecast drop in unemployment claims and a jump in worker productivity ahead of tomorrow’s key labour report.

The number of Americans claiming unemployment benefits for the first time last week fell to 512,000, while third quarter US productivity soared at its highest annual pace in six years of 9.5%. Hourly output per worker rose 6.9% over the three months. The Labor Department’s monthly report is expected to reveal US non-farm payrolls lost 175,000 workers in October, bringing the unemployment rate up to 9.9% from 9.8% the previous month.

Domestic data also attracted attention after manufacturing output in September increased at a faster pace than had been widely predicted. The main focus in the UK, however, was on the Bank of England Monetary Policy Committee meeting, which today confirmed it is leaving interest rates unchanged at 0.5% but will expand its bond purchase scheme by £25 billion compared to the $50 billion injection that many have expected. On the continent, the European Central Bank also kept rates steady, holding its main financing rate at 1.0% and rates for overnight lending and deposits at 1.75% and 0.25%, respectively.

Among UK blue-chips, oil & gas producers helped fuel the overall index rise as the price of light, sweet crude oil hovered above the $80 per barrel mark. Heavyweights Royal Dutch Shell and BP took on 1.4% and 1.0% each.

Retailers were also in demand for the second session running after Belgian supermarkets group Delhaize upgraded its full-year earnings growth forecast, attracting investors to UK-listed peers Tesco, 2.4% firmer, and Sainsbury, up 0.7%, and to broader retail stocks Next (+2.3%) and Kingfisher (+1.7%).

These strong performances were partly offset by a weaker banking sector following the government’s extension of its bank bail-out plan, announced earlier this week. Lloyds Banking Group and Royal Bank of Scotland were the worst off, down 3.5%-3.8%, tracked by Barclays and HSBC, 1.1%-1.4% lighter.

But the benchmark index’s main casualty was phone company Cable & Wireless, off 6.2% after missing the market’s first-half sales forecasts as it confirmed it will demerge the business. Meanwhile, telco BT Group and mobile phone giant Vodafone added 2.5% and 1.1%, respectively, on the positive read-across from Deutsche Telekom’s latest results.

Elsewhere, weak results also came in the shape of a miner. Copper producer Vedanta Resources slipped 2.1%, taking with it Eurasian Natural Resources, BHP Billiton and Xstrata, each of which lost between 0.2% and 0.6%, as softer commodity prices and higher costs dragged its first-half profits down a fiercer-than-forecast 46%.

On the second line, ITV was a stand out winner, surging 9.6% after revealing it sees advertising sales reversing their declining trend and increasing 4% next month. The broadcaster also said the market is stabilising.

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