By Julien Ponthus
LONDON (Reuters) - UK shares gained on Thursday after three days in the red, while Britain's third-biggest company, Unilever , fell after announcing it would make Rotterdam its sole legal home a year before Brexit.
At 1000 GMT, the blue-chip FTSE 100 (FTSE) index was up 0.28 percent at 7,151.88 points, recovering some losses from the day before, thanks to gains in financials, healthcare and mining shares.
The diplomatic tensions between the UK and Russia have so far had little impact on British shares.
Unilever (L:ULVR) (AS:UNc), which said it would keep its London-listing despite scrapping its London corporate headquarters, was down 0.8 percent.
Retail landlord Hammerson (L:HMSO) posted the worst performance of the FTSE, down about 5 percent after a downgrade from Credit Suisse (SIX:CSGN), which cut its target price to 460 pence from 605 pence.
Among smaller stocks, shares in soap and shampoo maker PZ Cussons (L:PZC) lost as much as a quarter of their value at the open after the group issued a profit warning.
"It remains difficult to predict the extent/timing of any recovery, especially in Africa, so we remain prudent", the broker Investec said.
Two hours after the open, shares in PZ Cussons were down 15 percent and set for their worst day of trading ever.
Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS) and Barclays (LON:BARC) have already reduced their financial targets for the stock.
Kier Group (L:KIE) also suffered heavy losses, down 5 percent, after a trading update.
Hikma topped the mid-size index (FTMC) with a 15.6 percent rise after brokers issued positive recommendations for the drugmaker/
Spirax-Sarco Engineering (L:SPX) was the winner on the pan-European (STOXX) STOXX 600, up 4.6 percent after it reported better-than-expected full-year revenues.
Glencore (L:GLEN) rose 0.8 percent after it agreed to sell around a third of its cobalt production over the next three years to Chinese battery recycler GEM (SZ:002340).