 | London | Paris | Frankfurt | Tokyo | Wall Street | |
(Open): A pick-up in Chinese manufacturing activity helped to boost mining shares, which in turn pushed the FTSE higher.
Among the mining stocks to benefit were Vedanta Resources, up 4%, and Anglo American, up 3.9%.
The benchmark FTSE 100 index rose 85.64 points to 6,498.57.
Vodafone shares rose a further 3.3%, with confirmation of the sale of its stake in US mobile network Verizon Wireless expected later.
Vodafone said talks over the sale were "advanced", citing a price of $130bn (£84bn) which would make it one of the largest corporate deals in history.
Rolls-Royce rose 1.3% after it announced it had sold its 50% stake in the RTM322 helicopter engine programme to Turbomeca for 293m euros ($386m; £249m).
On the currency markets, the pound rose 0.2% against the dollar to $1.5526 and was also up 0.2% against the euro at 1.1740 euros.
Source: BBC News - Business http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-11899862#sa-ns_mchannel=rss&ns_source=PublicRSS20-sa
