The London market climbed to a record mid-session high, with investors snapping up energy stocks on the back of the rising oil price.
The FTSE 100 hit 7,460.2 in early trading on Monday before paring gains to rise 8.6 points to 7,444.28 as the top flight continued to build on Friday’s all-time closing high of 7,435.39.
Oil majors were among the biggest risers after energy ministers from Russia and Saudi Arabia took further steps to tackle oversupply in the market by extending production cuts from the middle of 2017 until March next year.
The comments caused Brent crude to soar by 2.7% to 52.20 US dollars (£40.36) a barrel while shares in Royal Dutch Shell A and BP rose by 19p to 2,164p and 5p to 465.1p respectively.
Connor Campbell, analyst at Spreadex, said the London market was “ignoring both the ’WannaCry’ ransomware attack of last Friday and a selection of weak Chinese data that saw industrial production drop from 7.6% to 6.5% month-on-month”.
The oil price was also enjoying an uplift after China said it would drive 124 billion US dollars (£95.8 billion) into its Silk Road plan, which aims to unlock two trillion US dollars (£1.5 trillion) worth of imports over the next five years.
The mammoth infrastructure plan provides an enormous opportunity for resources firms as Beijing looks to build a modern-day version of the ancient Silk Road.
Shares in mining giant Glencore were up 4.1p to 289.1p while Rio Tinto rose 32.5p to 3,002.5p.
In Europe, Germany’s Dax was 0.1% lower and the Cac 40 in France was recording a marginal fall.
On the currency markets, the pound bounced back after struggling on Friday following a gloomy update on UK economic growth from the Bank of England.
Sterling was up 0.4% to 1.293 US dollars and 0.2% higher versus the euro at 1.181.
In UK stocks, Thomson-owner TUI was rooted at the bottom of London’s premier index despite narrowing its half-year losses.
Europe’s biggest tour operator posted a group loss of 308.6 million euro (£261 million) in the six months to March 31, an improvement on the 394.9 million euro (£334.3 million) in the same period last year.
Revenue rose 3.3% to 6.38 billion euro (£5.4 billion), with chief executive Fritz Joussen again pointing to a “challenging environment”. Shares were down more than 5%, or 60p, to 1,130p.
Away from the top tier, cyber security stocks were on the rise in response to the global “ransomware” attack, which claimed more than 200,000 victims in about 150 countries.
Security software firm Sophos Group was the biggest riser on the FTSE 250, up more than 7%, or 24.4p, to 365.6p.