FTSE ends up slightly; U.S. jobs data awaited

LONDON (Reuters) - Britain's top share index closed a touch higher on Thursday after a lackluster day of trading following a powerful advance the day before, with investors keeping their powder dry ahead of U.S. jobs data on Friday.

Autonomy was among the top blue-chip risers, up 5.2 percent with traders citing press reports that the software company could find itself at the center of a takeover battle between Microsoft and Oracle.

The FTSE 100 closed up 4.63 points or 0.1 percent at 5,371.04 in low volume, with the index trading 73 percent of its 90-day average.

The index closed up 2.7 percent at 5,366.41 on Wednesday, its strongest daily performance in almost a month, buoyed by encouraging manufacturing data from the U.S. and China, along with M&A speculation.

"It was always going to be a slightly subdued day after the very strong rise that we had yesterday," Jim Wood-Smith, head of research at Williams de Broe, said.

"To an extent today is the phoney war before we get to the real action on Friday, when we get the U.S. non-farm payrolls," he said.

U.S. DATA

Data from across the Atlantic on Thursday showed pending sales of previously owned U.S. homes rebounded unexpectedly in July and new claims for jobless benefits fell last week.

Among other blue chip risers, defense contractor BAE Systems

climbed 3.7 percent after the firm received a $629 million contract to upgrade 1,700 Caiman MRAP vehicles.

On the downside, miners which had been among the best performers on Wednesday retreated.

Lonmin and African Barrick Gold fell 1.9 and 1 percent respectively as Citigroup cut both their ratings to "hold" from "buy," arguing precious commodities are set for a subdued second half of 2010.

Hochschild Mining shed 2.5 percent as the same broker downgraded its rating to "sell" from "hold."

UK Chipmaker ARM Holdings was a big faller, down 3.8 percent, with JPMorgan Cazenove arguing that U.S. peer Intel's

purchase of Infineon's wireless unit is neutral rather than positive for ARM.

Testing equipment firm Intertek Group dropped 0.7 percent, with traders citing a Morgan Stanley note in which the broker cut its rating to "underweight" from "equal-weight."

Telecoms firm Cable & Wireless Worldwide and satellite business Inmarsat fell 3 and 2.4 percent, respectively, paring the previous session's gains, having been linked with M&A whispers on Wednesday.

"It's worth pointing out that the fact that we haven't seen a flood of opportunistic profit-taking after yesterday's big move higher ... shows a degree of confidence," Ben Critchley, sales trader at IG Index, said.

(Editing by David Holmes)