FX.co ★ FTSE 100 Hovers Near 3-Month High

On Wednesday, the FTSE 100 remained steady, lingering near its peak over the last three months after a 0.7% rise from the previous day. British American Tobacco experienced a marginal increase of over 0.5% after it expanded the size of its stake sell-off in ITC in India to $1.5 billion, surpassing initial plans. Rentokil Initial saw an uptick of more than 2% following its agreement to divest its French workwear division to HIG Capital for €410 million. Despite reporting sales figures that exceeded expectations, Kingfisher, the parent company of B&Q, witnessed a decline of 5.4%, although the situation improved slightly as losses minimized over time. In the three months leading up to April, like-for-like sales increased by 1.8%, driven by robust demand in the UK that compensated for weaker performance in France and Poland. Pets at Home posted a pretax profit aligning broadly with forecasts and noted that the new financial year commenced as anticipated. Concurrently, Thames Water incurred a fine of £122.7 million from Ofwat as a result of two separate investigations into its operational conduct.