London - Britain's top shares edged slightly lower on Friday, lagging euro zone stocks, with retailer Marks & Spencer leading the falls after announcing the departure of its clothing boss.
The blue-chip FTSE 100 index was down 0.4 percent at 6 770.23 points by 8.26 GMT after rising 0.6 percent in the previous session.
Marks & Spencer's dropped 1.3 percent, the top faller in percentage terms, after Britain's biggest clothing retailer announced that John Dixon, the head of its non-food division, has resigned to become chief executive of another firm.
M&S said that in line with its succession plans, Dixon's role will be assumed by Steve Rowe, head of its upmarket food division. Analysts speculated the change puts Rowe, who has been with M&S for more than 26 years, in pole position to succeed group Chief Executive Marc Bolland when he decides to depart.
“One of the interesting aspects of this story is that it now seems more widely accepted among the press that current CEO Marc Bolland will leave the company in the foreseeable future whether it succeeds or not in the coming Autumn/Winter clothing season,” BESI Research analyst Tony Shiret wrote in a note.
In other fallers, GlaxoSmithKline dropped 1.1 percent after UBS cut its price target to 1400 pence from 1500 pence.
On the upside, online gambling firm 888 Holdings rose 4.5 percent after the company said it had agreed to buy larger rival Bwin.party Digital Entertainment in a cash and stock deal worth nearly 900 million pounds ($1.40 billion).
“If 888 acquires bwin.party it will create a materially larger business with cost and revenue synergies to extract,” Numis analysts said in a note.
“There is relatively little overlap: 888's core market is the UK whereas Germany is bwin.party's largest single market. bwin.party's principal product is sports betting whereas 888 is more focused on casino and poker.”
Reuters