Euroshares open up after Wall St recovery; oils track crude higher - UPDATE

Europe's largest exchanges moved higher in opening deals after yesterday's recovery on Wall Street and modest gains on Asian indices, with heavyweight oils group's tracking the price of crude higher.

At 8:48 a.m., the DJ STOXX 50 was up 8.61 points, or 0.3 percent, higher at 2842.33 and the DJ STOXX 600 was up 1.09 points, or 0.39 percent, at 279.04. The Dow Jones industrial average finished up 81.58, or 0.73 percent, at 11,229.02, after a multibillion dollar deal between Dow Chemical Co. and rival Rohm and Haas Co. helped offset concerns about the financial sector and energy costs.

Oil's resurgence back above $141 a barrel and the continued sell-off in banks which pushed Lehman Brothers to an all-time low and Wachovia to a 17 year low intra-day had pulled the Dow into negative territory in afternoon trading.

And oil continued to rise in Asian trade with New York's main oil futures contract, light sweet crude for August delivery, up 13 cents to 141.78 dollars a barrel after a jump of $5.60 to close at $141.65 Thursday at the New York Mercantile Exchange.

This lifted oil shares with Total up 1.71 percent, ENI up 1.16 percent and Repsol YPF added 0.65 percent.

Schneider Electric added 1.86 percent after Citigroup lifted its rating on the shares to 'buy' from 'hold' and Philips fell 1.4 percent after the broker downgraded the Dutch group to 'hold' from 'buy'.

Food groups rallied after sharp falls yesterday, boosted by news Morgan Stanley has lifted its sector stance to 'in-line' from 'cautious'.

The broker said some stocks such as Unilever, up 0.25 percent, are oversold.

Its favourite pick remains Nestle, up 0.5 percent.

Carrefour added 0.6 percent, having fallen 8.56 percent after the supermarket group's disappointing update yesterday.

Casino was up 1.91 percent after its trading update this morning.

Pharming Group N.V. shares soared 15 percent in early morning trade on Friday with investors pleased with the positive results seen for lead product Rhucin during ongoing open-label studies.

Telecoms and utilities stocks though slipped lower as investors spurned stocks traditionally seen as safe-havens.

Telecom Italia fell 1.79 percent and France Telecom fell 0.63 percent.

RWE, up 0.62 percent was upgraded to 'buy' from 'hold' at SG Secs. deborah.hyde@thomson.com dlh/ajb

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