UK stocks climb with banks leading after Trump's Powell U-turn

(Reuters) -Britain's main stocks indexes rose on Wednesday, led by gains in banks and metal mining companies, while markets also found relief in U.S. President Donald Trump's reversal of his threats to fire Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell.

The blue-chip FTSE 100 index was up 0.9%, marking its eighth straight day of gains, while the midcap index climbed 1.3%.

Financial shares led the gains on both the indexes with major banks like Standard Chartered, HSBC Holdings and Barclays rising between 6.3% and 4.9%. The banks index climbed 5%.

Investor sentiment also improved following reports of a potential de-escalation on China tariffs by the U.S. as the two economic powers remain locked in a trade war.

Separately, the Trump administration is preparing trade negotiation terms that would ask Britain to reduce its automotive tariff from 10% to 2.5%, according to Wall Street Journal sources.

Finance minister Rachel Reeves is due to meet Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent this week to push Britain's case for a trade agreement with Washington.

Industrial metal miners rose 4.5% in the day as copper prices in London hit a near three-week high.

The chemicals index was also up 5.25% with Croda International jumping 10.7% after the company reported 8% growth in first quarter group sales. Croda also topped the FTSE 100 index.

Babcock rose 5.4% after the engineering firm said it expects fiscal 2025 operating profit to jump 17%.

On the data front, British businesses faced a sharp downturn in April as activity contracted to its lowest level since November 2022, the S&P Global's Composite PMI showed on Wednesday.

Reckitt was among the worst performers on the blue-chip index as the maker of Dettol and Lysol cleaning products missed first-quarter like-for-like net sales growth estimates. Its shares dropped 5.7%.

On the midcap index, Hochschild Mining tumbled 9.5% after the precious metal miner missed first quarter production estimates.

(Reporting by Ragini Mathur in Bengaluru; Editing by Shinjini Ganguli and Chris Reese)