LONDON MARKETS: U.K. Stocks Slide Amid Ebola Fears

By Sara Sjolin, MarketWatch

LONDON (MarketWatch) -- U.K. stocks headed lower on Friday amid a broader global selloff, ignited by reports of an Ebola case in New York City and offsetting relief that U.K. GDP numbers didn't miss expectations.

The FTSE 100 index slid 0.4% to 6,395.56, trimming its weekly gain to 1.4%.

Tesco PLC dropped for a third straight day, down 1.6%. Shares of the supermarket chain sank 6.6% on Thursday, after it said its accounting error was bigger than initially estimated and revealed Chairman Richard Broadbent is stepping down.

Travel shares and airlines were also on the decline, after reports that a doctor who traveled back to New York from an Ebola-stricken region of Africa tested positive for the virus on Thursday. Concerns over the outbreak of the deadly virus also took a toll on U.S. markets, with futures pointing to a weak open on Wall Street.

In London, InterContinental Hotels Group PLC lost 1.6%, TUI Travel PLC fell 1%, easyJet PLC dropped 0.8%, and International Consolidated Airlines Group SA gave up 0.7%.

Pearson PLC dropped 2.8% after the publisher said its chief financial officer, Robin Freestone, is stepping down before the end of next year.

On the data front, the first estimate of third-quarter U.K. gross domestic product came in as expected, showing the economy expanded by 0.7%. Although the growth rate was a slowdown from the 0.9% in the second quarter, it still marked a seventh straight period of growth. The pound (GBPUSD) climbed after the data, trading at $1.6042, up from $1.6031 ahead of the data.

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