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* Tech investor Prosus hit by U.S. move on Chinese apps
* Deutsche Telekom boosted by T-Mobile's upbeat Q2 report
* Main regional indexes record weekly gains
(Updates with market close)
By Sruthi Shankar
Aug 7 (Reuters) - European shares closed higher on Friday,
marking weekly gains as investors focused on a broadly
supportive earnings season and improving economic data in
Europe rather than rising U.S.-China tensions.
The main indexes spent the morning in the red after U.S.
President Donald Trump moved to ban U.S. transactions with the
Chinese owners of messaging app WeChat and video-sharing app
TikTok, further escalating friction with Beijing.
Amsterdam-listed Prosus, with its biggest
investment in Tencent, fell 4.0%.
Markets, however, stabilised later, boosted by telecoms
, technology and healthcare stocks.
The pan-European STOXX 600 index, up 0.3%, closed
out with weekly gains of 2%. German stocks rose 0.7%,
while London's FTSE 100 and France's CAC 40 were
flat, but all logged weekly rises.
Data showed U.S. jobs increased by a better-than-expected
1.763 million in July, although the pace of recovery slowed amid
a resurgence in new coronavirus infections, pressuring the White
House and Congress to agree another aid package.
"The jobs numbers were surprisingly good," said Nancy
Tengler, chief investment officer of Laffer Tengler Investments.
"But we expect a moderation in jobs improvement in the near-term
as businesses wait to see what Washington comes up with."
With the bulk of the European earnings season over,
investors were relieved that most companies had exceeded
analysts' much-lowered forecasts for quarterly profits.
Refinitiv data showed about 60% of the STOXX companies that have
reported so far beat estimates.
Hikma Pharmaceuticals jumped 10.9% after saying it
had started manufacturing remdesivir, an approved treatment for
COVID-19 from U.S.-based Gilead, and it raised its
annual sales outlook for two of its biggest divisions.
Deutsche Telekom, which owns 43% of T-Mobile
, rose 2.7% after the U.S. firm added more monthly
subscribers than expected in the second quarter and said it
surpassed rival AT&T.
The broader telecoms index rose 1% to lead sectoral
gains, although stocks considered more sensitive to business
cycles, including banks, miners and oil and gas
companies, handed back some of this week's steady gains.
Standard Life Aberdeen's shares inched higher after
the asset manager said it would pay a dividend even as its
profit dropped 30%.
(Reporting by Sruthi Shankar in Bengaluru; Editing by Arun
Koyyur and Barbara Lewis)
Hikma Pharmaceuticals (HIK)
