Wednesday close

With investors focused on the imminent launch of the euro, European stocks closed in mixed trade as the year drew to an end. Frankfurt completed its last mark-denominated session on a downbeat note while French stocks made last-minute gains.

Frankfurt

Germany's electronic Xetra DAX ended near its day's lows with a loss of nearly 1% to close at 5,006.57, having traded in a range of 4,999.71-5,089.23. The DAX floor session finished down 29.48 at 5,002.39.

Among corporate losers, Siemens, which set about major restructuring in 1998, was among leading losers, falling DM 5.25 to 107.50 although in extremely low volume.

Paris

French stocks notched up a 31.5% gain on the year at the end of their last session in francs on Wednesday.

The blue-chip CAC-40 index closed up 51.56 points or 1.33% at 3,942.66 in volume of Ffr 5.5bn. "It's been a satisfactory end to the year - just a couple of weeks ago we were anticipating a close around 3,500," said one senior trader.

Some dealers felt nostalgic about the fact that it was the last session in which they dealt in francs. "There is some nostalgia about it being the last day of trading in francs, but really, no one is interested in doing any business," said one trader. "At the moment, most people are thinking about Monday and beginning to wonder about how the prices will look in euros. Few are really interested in what happens today," another trader said.

Defence electronics group Thomson-CSF closed up 6.19%, boosted by growing speculation of a merger with GEC 's Marconi unit. Traders said Thomson's chances of uniting with Marconi looked good after UK press reports said that Germany's DASA had agreed outline terms for a $25 billion merger with British Aerospace.