Europe close: Stocks brush aside strong US jobs data

European markets appeared to shrug off data showing that America's jobs market went into overdrive in September.

According to the U.S. Department of Labor, the economy generated 336,000 jobs last month, nearly twice economists' forecasts.

But stocks rose, government bonds pared early losses and the single currency rebounded.

"European stock indices were initially dragged lower by their US counterparts as the country's economy added nearly twice as many jobs as expected in September, the most in eight months," said Axel Rudolph, senior market analyst at IG.

"They recovered towards the end of the session on short-covering ahead of the weekend, though. Next week traders will focus on German industrial production, US inflation and UK GDP."

The Stoxx 600 was up 0.82% at 444.93, with Germany's Dax jumping 1.06% alongside to 15,229.77 while the FTSE Mib put on 1.16% to 27,810.61.

Yields on the benchmark 10-year German bund edged up by one basis point to 2.888%, albeit after earlier reaching almost 2.96%.

Euro/dollar ended the session at 1.0592 or up by 0.39% on the day.

In other economic news, German factory orders were up 3.9% over the month in seasonally and calendar adjusted terms after a revised 11.3% drop in July (changed from the initial estimate of -11.7%). The consensus estimate was for a smaller rise of 1.8%.

UK house prices fell again in September as high borrowing costs continued to dent the market, according to Halifax. House prices declined by 4.7% on the year, following a 4.5% drop in August. On a month-on-month basis, house prices were down 0.4% in September following a 1.8% decline the month before.

Aviva jumps on M&A rumours

UK-listed Aviva surged on Friday after markets blog Betaville suggested in one of its ‘uncooked’ alerts that the insurance group was at the centre of takeover talk. Citing people following the situation, Betaville said there were rumours that Aviva has attracted interest from a company looking to purchase the business.

However, the identity of the company circling Aviva is unclear. Allianz and Axa were suggested as possible interested parties.

Volvo and Renault were making headlines after announcing they would joint launch a new company, along with logistics group CMA CGM, to produce electric vans. The auto manufacturers will each invest €300m over the next three years. Both stocks were higher early on.