LONDON MARKETS: Standard Chartered Gains, Topping FTSE 100

By Carla Mozee, MarketWatch

LONDON (MarketWatch) -- U.K. stocks moved slightly higher Thursday, with shares of Standard Chartered PLC gaining as the bank said it has named a new chief executive.

The FTSE 100 picked up 0.1% to 6,943.70.

The best performer was Standard Chartered PLC , whose shares climbed 2.7% after the Asia-focused lender said Chief Executive Peter Sands will step down in June after eight years in the role. He will be succeeded by Bill Winters, who once served as the co-CEO of J.P. Morgan Investment Bank.

It is now "the right moment to hand over to new leadership," said Sands in a statement. "It has been my privilege to lead the people of Standard Chartered through a period of extraordinary turbulence and growth." Sands had been under pressure to step down as profit has fallen and shares have struggled.

On the losing end of the FTSE 100, EasyJet PLC was down 1.5% as the budget airline's shares traded without dividend rights.

Reed Elsevier PLC shares were also down, losing 4.6% as the publishing and exhibitions company posted a fall in full-year net profit and revenue (http://www.marketwatch.com/story/reed-elsevier-full-year-profit-falls-2015-02-26-2485424).

The second reading of fourth-quarter U.K. gross domestic product is due at 9:30 a.m. London time, or 4:30 a.m. Eastern Time. The first reading, released by the Office for National Statistics last month, showed growth slowed to 0.5% in the final quarter of 2014. Ahead of the release, the pound (GBPUSD) bought $1.5520, compared with $1.5530 late Thursday in New York.

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