Europe midday: Stocks hold on to gains despite drag from miners

European stocks are holding onto slight gains with pharma among the top performers amid mixed economic data and as they brace for the release of a slate of US economic data later in the session.

At noon the Stoxx 600 was up by 0.06% to 394.61 as the Dax gained 0.15% to 12,729.14 and the Cac-40 another 0.07% to 5,387.03.

The Stoxx 600 sub-index for pharmaceutical companies was among the top performing groups, rising 0.85% to 797.56 with AstraZeneca leading the advance.

Miners were weaker, weighed down by another retreat for iron ore futures.

Euro/dollar is up by 0.11% to 1.0874 as front month Brent crude oil futures were drifting lower by 0.12% to $50.71 a barrel on the ICE.

Commenting on the situation in markets at the end of the week, Michael Hewson, chief market analyst at CMC Markets UK said: "Stocks had a disappointing day yesterday with a weaker bias across the board, despite further gains in the oil price, as a lack of positive drivers weighed on sentiment.

"It would be ironic in the extreme now that the worst of the political fog appears to have cleared, that we could well see stock markets post their first negative week since early April."

Helping stocks along and acting as a backdrop, Asian bourses were mostly higher in late trading with some traders referencing talk of receding trade tensions between China and the US as the main catalyst.

Also worth noting, overnight Morgan Stanley trimmed the odds it assigns to a US recession scenario this year form 30% to 25%, although it should be noted that the latter continues to be high by historical standards. In July 2016 the investment bank pegged the chances of a downturn this year at 40%.

Back in all things Europe, French nominal wage gains accelerated to a 0.6% quarter-on-quarter clip at the start of 2017, easily outstripping forecasts for a rise of 0.2%.

However, at the wider euro area level industrial production dipped by 0.1% month-on-month in March (consensus: 0.4%), according to Eurostat.

Earlier in the session, Germany's Finance ministry announced that real German gross domestic product grew by 0.6% quarter-on-quarter over the first three months of 2017, as expected.

That came alongside figures showing a rise of 2.0% in harmonised consumer prices in the euro area's largest economy.

AstraZeneca announced its durvalumab immuno-oncology drug has become the first such medicine to successfully treat advanced lung cancer patients who had not had success with chemotherapy, sending its shares bounding 5% higher.

Shares in Richemont were still among the worst performers on the Stoxx 600 come midday after the Swiss luxury goods maker reported a 4% drop in annual sales.

French media group Vivendi on the other hand was moving higher on that same pan-European gauge after offering to take Group Bollore's near 60% stake in Havas off its hands.