By Simon Falush
LONDON (Reuters) - Weakness in energy stocks and drugmakers outweighed gains in miners, leading Britain's FTSE 100 <.FTSE> to close down 0.3 percent on Friday, while Barclays <BARC.L> rose after it said it was in talks to sell fund unit BGI.
Britain's blue-chip index closed 14.47 points down at 4,348.11, after rising 0.7 percent on Thursday to snap a three-day losing run.
Trade was thin going into the weekend and investors were wary about putting big positions on the table, with just 77 percent of the volume of the last 90 trading days transacted.
The UK benchmark is down 1.5 percent for the year and 2.6 percent for the week but is still 25.6 percent up from a six-year trough set on March 9.
"There's a bit of a sense of nervousness around, there were bits and pieces of data around," said Jim Wood-Smith, analyst at Williams de Broe in Exeter, pointing to U.S. retail sales and jobs data earlier in the week.
Data on Friday was slightly more upbeat, however. U.S. consumer prices were unchanged in April from March and industrial output declined at a slower pace, hinting that the worst phase of the recession may be over.
Oil producers were the top sectoral loser as crude fell to around $57 per barrel. BP <BP.L> and Royal Dutch Shell <RDSa.L> slipped 0.6 percent and 0.8 percent respectively.
But BT Group <BT.L> saw the biggest fall, down 3.9 percent after UBS cut its rating to "sell" from "neutral" and Nomura cut its price target and assigned it a "reduce" rating.
Drugmakers also retreated, with AstraZeneca <AZN.L> losing 0.8 percent, GlaxoSmithKline <GSK.L> down 1.3 percent and Shire <SHP.L> off 0.6 percent.
Heavyweight mobile operator Vodafone <VOD.L> fell 2.3 percent retreating from gains made earlier in the week, with investors looking ahead to results on Tuesday.
BGI BOOST FOR BARCLAYS
Barclays <BARC.L> gained 5.8 percent after a it said it had received "unsolicited interest" for San Francisco-based Barclays Global Investors. The bank is up 466 percent from its trough set in early March.
Barclays was in talks to sell the business for up to $10 billion (6.6 billion pounds) to potential bidders including U.S. money manager BlackRock <BLK.N>, people familiar with the matter said.
BlackRock declined to comment.
"Selling off an asset like that rather makes you worry what might be beneath the bonnet," said David Morrison, market strategist at GFT Global Markets.
Other banks were mixed, HSBC <HSBA.L> and Standard Chartered <STAN.L> fell 1.4 percent and 1.8 percent respectively while Lloyds Banking Group <LLOY.L> added 1.6 percent.
The European Union's statistics office Eurostat said on Friday the gross domestic product of the 16 countries using the euro shrank 2.5 percent quarter on quarter for a 4.6 percent contraction year on year -- the worst on record.
Rio Tinto <RIO.L> gained 2.7 percent after the miner said it remained committed to a planned $19.5 billion tie-up with Chinese metals firm Chinalco, responding to talk that the deal may be revised to let more shareholders take part in a rights issue.
Elsewhere in the sector, BHP Billiton <BLT.L>, Anglo American <AAL.L>, Kazakhmys <KAZ.L>, Lonmin <LMI.L> and Antofagasta <ANTO.L> put on between 1.1 percent and 3.5 percent.
Engineer Invensys <ISYS.L> rose 1.9 percent, extending Thursday's 13 percent rise after beating expectations on operating profit and resuming the payment of a final dividend.
Both JPMorgan and Citigroup raised their price targets on the stock.
Thomas Cook <TCG.L> shed 2 percent after losing 7.3 percent in the previous session. Its parent Arcandor <AROG.DE> was set to ask the German government for up to 700 million euros ($948.9 million) in loan guarantees, financial sources close to the matter said on Thursday.
(Reporting by Simon Falush; Editing by Jon Loades-Carter)