Jane Denton

Shares in Unilever, which owns brands like Cif, Cornetto and Dove, were up 4.84% or 187.14p to 4,050.00p on Thursday morning, having fallen around 8% in the last year.

WH Smith's share price fell by 9% on Thursday after the group flagged lower growth at the start of the second-half, after a strong travel boom last year.

WPP's quarterly revenue fell 1.4% to £3.4bn in the period, amid lower income from China and a slowdown in marketing spending among tech giants.

Emma Legge said she struggled financially before she joined a direct selling company

GSK expects annual core operating profit growth of between 9% and to 11%, up from a previous forecast of 7% to 10%.

In a shake-up of its operations, Aston Martin has been winding down production on certain models, while gearing up to release new models later this year.

The S&P Global/CIPS UK manufacturing PMI survey slipped to 49.1 in April, having hit a 20-month high of 50.3 the previous month.

Melrose's full year guidance remained unchanged, with an expected 33% year-on-year rise in adjusted operating profit to £560m.

Pandora, which has around 280 stores in the UK, saw like-for-like sales jump by 11% in the first quarter, new results show.

The 'worst-selling' sector in March was UK All Companies, which experienced outflows of £887m, according to the Investment Association.