London's FTSE 100 ended the trading week 0.22% in the green as investors assessed the latest retail sales and borrowing data.
UK retail sales fell 1.3% month over month in April, following a revised 0.6% rise in March, data from the Office for National Statistics showed. The decline was larger than the 0.6% fall expected by analysts.
"April 2026 will be remembered as the first month that the impact of the Middle East conflict first hit British consumers. We already saw consumer sentiment fall at its fastest rate for four years, and we now have evidence that this translated into shoppers buying less in stores," PwC UK head of retail Jacqueline Windsor said. "Overall, while retailers will be disappointed, April's performance was somewhat expected after a better than expected March, and against strong comparatives from this time last year."
Also from the ONS, the country's borrowing reached 24.3 billion pounds sterling in April, 3.4 billion pounds more than the forecast by the Office for Budget Responsibility.
In other economic news, GfK's consumer confidence index improved by two points to -23 in May, with four measures rising and one down.
"Consumers appear to be in a more generous mood in May, with a two-point increase in the headline score and improving perceptions of both personal finances and the wider economy," GfK consumer insights director Neil Bellamy said. "Inflation may have fallen in April, but with price pressures expected to rise again and continued uncertainty around interest rates, it's unlikely May marks the beginning of a sustained improvement."
On the corporate front, AstraZeneca (AZN.L) was down 0.64% on Friday's close as its cancer drugs were recommended for approval in the European Union. The first recommendation involved the drugmaker's camizestrant in combination with a cyclin-dependent kinase 4/6 inhibitor for adults with breast cancer, while the second concerns Enhertu, co-developed with Daiichi Sankyo, for patients with previously treated HER2-positive metastatic solid tumors.
AstraZeneca and Daiichi Sankyo's Datroway also secured approval from the US Food and Drug Administration for the treatment of adult patients with unresectable or metastatic triple-negative breast cancer who are not PD-1/PD-L1 inhibitor candidates.