Markets

Coming of age: London’s ‘languishing’ FTSE 100 celebrates its 40th anniversary

The index which contains the biggest 100 companies on the London Stock Exchange is said by some to have had made little progress in recent years

The ‘Footsie’ today contains 26 companies which featured during the 1984 launch, including major banks Barclays and Lloyds, retailers Sainsbury’s and Tesco

The FTSE 100 is celebrating its 40th anniversary, as firms from Barclays to Sainsbury’s remain a fixture of the UK’s top stock market index.

Dubbed the Footsie, the index containing the biggest 100 companies on the London Stock Exchange (LSE) launched on January 3 1984.

It was widely considered a measure of Britain’s stock market and a gauge of the health of the wider economy.

It holds constituents with a combined value of £1.9 trillion, ...