Energy and drugmakers dent FTSE

By Simon Falush

LONDON (Reuters) - Weakness in energy stocks and drugmakers outweighed gains in miners, leading Britain's FTSE 100 .FTSE to close down 0.3 percent on Friday, while Barclays (BARC.L) rose after it said it was in talks to sell fund unit BGI.

Britain's blue-chip index closed 14.47 points down at 4,348.11, after rising 0.7 percent on Thursday to snap a three-day losing run.

Trade was thin going into the weekend and investors were wary about putting big positions on the table, with just 77 percent of the volume of the last 90 trading days transacted.

The UK benchmark is down 1.5 percent for the year and 2.6 percent for the week but is still 25.6 percent up from a six-year trough set on March 9.

"There's a bit of a sense of nervousness around, there were bits and pieces of data around," said Jim Wood-Smith, analyst at Williams de Broe in Exeter, pointing to U.S. retail sales and jobs data earlier in the week.

Data on Friday was slightly more upbeat, however. U.S. consumer prices were unchanged in April from March and industrial output declined at a slower pace, hinting that the worst phase of the recession may be over.

Oil producers were the top sectoral loser as crude fell to around $57 per barrel. BP (BP.L) and Royal Dutch Shell (RDSa.L) slipped 0.6 percent and 0.8 percent respectively.

But BT Group (BT.L) saw the biggest fall, down 3.9 percent after UBS cut its rating to "sell" from "neutral" and Nomura cut its price target and assigned it a "reduce" rating.