British midcaps rose on Thursday as another dose of global central bank stimulus offered relief to equity markets in the wake of the fast-spreading coronavirus outbreak, while the export-laden FTSE 100 was pressured by a stronger pound.

The mid-cap index added 0.3 percent, led by gains for Spirent Communications after the telecoms firm reported better-than-expected annual revenue and said it had not yet assumed a hit to business from the epidemic.

The IMF on Wednesday predicted global growth in 2020 would mark its slowest pace since the 2008 financial crisis. It had earlier estimated an increase of 3.3 percent.

The blue-chip FTSE 100 was down 0.1 percent. Miners BHP Group and Rio Tinto fell 3.4 percent and 4 percent, respectively, in ex-dividend trading.

The Bank of England's next governor, Andrew Bailey, said it should wait for more clarity about the economic hit from the outbreak before making any decision to cut rates.

Europe

European shares rose for a fourth straight session on Thursday as the action taken this week by several major central banks to ease the impact of the coronavirus outbreak on growth fed through into financial markets.

The main European equity benchmark rose 0.6 percent by 08:13 GMT, showing steady gains for the first time since a market rout in late February.

The outbreak shows little signs of peaking globally, with Italy closing all schools and California declaring a state of emergency, but investors are hopeful stimulus from governments and central banks will protect the global economy.

Analysts firmly expect the European Central Bank to cut interest rates by 10 basis points next month, joining the US Federal Reserve and its peers in Canada and Australia in reducing borrowing costs.

Among individual movers, German car supplier Continental slumped 6.7 percent after it posted a net loss of 1.2 billion euros ($1.34bn) in 2019 as the company suffered from a global downturn in demand for passenger cars.

Meanwhile, science and technology company Merck KGaA rose 4.6 percent after it forecast "strong" growth core earnings for 2020.

Hong Kong

The Hong Kong stock market rose the most in a month on Thursday on hopes that global central banks, including China's, will ramp up policy easing to offset economic pressure from the coronavirus outbreak.

At the close of trade, the Hang Seng index was up 2.1 percent at 26,767.87, near its highest level since last Thursday touched during the session. The index also made the largest daily percentage uptick since February 6.

The Hang Seng China Enterprises index rose 2 percent. The index touched its highest level since February 21 on Thursday and also made its largest percentage daily gain in a month.

The sub-index of the Hang Seng tracking energy shares rose 1.2 percent, the IT sector rallied 2.8 percent, the financial sector ended 1.9 percent higher and the property sector gained 1.5 percent.

Markets widely believe Chinese authorities will continue to move to lower financing costs for businesses and roll out measures to prop up the economy despite the central bank holding a short-term interest rate this week.

Hong Kong's monetary policy moves lock-step with the United States because of its currency peg with the greenback. Some of the city's interbank rates hit 2018 lows this week, while blue-chips in China hit a seven-week high and shares in Shanghai touched a six-week high on brewing expectation of policy easing.

At their close, China's A-shares were at a premium of 30.03 percent over Hong Kong-listed H-shares.