LONDON, Dec 22: Stock markets in Europe mostly eased on Friday, the last trading day before the Christmas and New Year break, after a weak finish by Wall Street overnight.London's FTSE 100 index of leading shares was the only riser among Europe's main markets, edging up 0.02 per cent to 6,185.10 points.

However in Frankfurt the DAX 30 fell 0.26 per cent to reach 6,557.04 points and the Paris CAC 40 shed 0.28 per cent to 5,495.08.

The DJ Euro Stoxx 50 index of eurozone blue chip shares lost 0.24 per cent to 4,102.38 points. The euro stood at 1.3205 dollars.

European indices recently struck the highest points for almost six years in the wake of all-time peaks on Wall Street due largely to strong company earnings and fervent takeover activity according to dealers.

US stocks however turned lower in afternoon trading on Thursday as a sharply disappointing regional manufacturing report shook up what had been a quiet session on Wall Street.

In London, the share price in energy giant Royal Dutch Shell shrugged off a weak start, rising 0.17 per cent to 1,799 pence.

The Anglo-Dutch group had been hit at the open by news that Russian natural gas giant Gazprom had secured control Thursday of Shell's giant Sakhalin-2 energy project after a politicised battle.

Shell announced late on Thursday that the Russian state natural gas giant would control 50 per cent, plus one, of shares in the Sakhalin-2 project, at a cost of $7.45 billion (5.66 billion euros).Gazprom's victory ended a bitter and often complex battle for control of the energy project based on an island off Russia's far eastern coast, which is meant to ship liquified natural gas to Japan and other Asian clients starting 2008.

The price of shares in Vodafone fell by 0.35 per cent to 143.25 pence after the world's biggest mobile phone company had said on Friday that it was considering expansion into the vast Indian mobile telephony market via control of Hutchison Essar.

Hutchison Essar, owned by Hong Kong-based Hutchison, is the third-biggest mobile phone company in India with about 27 million subcribers and is worth about US$15 billion (11.36 billion euros), according to analysts.

In New York on Thursday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed down 0.30 per cent at 12,426.29 points.

The tech-heavy Nasdaq composite shed 0.49 per cent to 2,415.73 points and the Standard and Poor's 500 broad-market index lost 0.37pc to 1,418.30.—AFP