Europe's main stock markets ended up mixed on Tuesday despite some encouraging company reports after new data showed falls in eurozone private sector lending and US consumer confidence.

London's FTSE 100 index edged up 0.18 percent to 5200.97 points, Paris dipped 0.01 percent and Frankfurt DAX also fell 0.13 percent.

On Wall Street, the Dow Jones was up 0.38 percent at 9905.07 points, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq fell 0.77 percent to 2125 in afternoon trading.

Asian markets closed sharply down earlier in the trading day, with Tokyo stocks diving 1.45 percent and Hong Kong shares losing 1.86 percent.

"We believe the shift in focus is turning back to economic reports and away from earnings reports," said Scott Marcouiller, senior market strategist at US investment firm Wells Fargo Advisors.

The Conference Board, a US private research firm, said its consumer confidence index declined for the second month in a row, to 47.7 in October from a revised 53.4 in Spetember.

The decline was much steeper than expected by Wall Street.

Lynn Franco, research director of the Conference Board, said the condition of the labour market played "a major role in this grimmer assessment."

"Consumers also remain quite pessimistic about their future earnings, a sentiment that will likely constrain spending during the holidays."

Ian Shepherdson, chief US economist at High Frequency Economics, called the decline in the outlook "bad news" because it is a near-term leading indicator of consumer spending — the main driver of the US economy.

On the other side of the Atlantic, the European Central Bank said that bank lending to the private sector in the 16 countries that use the euro currency shrank in September for the first time on record.

Lending contracted by 0.3 percent, after growing by 0.1 percent in August.

Some relief for the markets came from the US property sector -- the epicentre of the global economic crisis -- where fresh figures indicated that the fall in US home prices eased further in August.

The Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller index showed an 11.3 percent year-over-year decline in home prices in 20 major metropolitan areas — the smallest drop since January 2008.

Meanwhile in foreign exchange trade, the dollar hit a five-week high against the yen amid speculation that the US Federal Reserve may signal a clearer timeframe for lifting its rock-bottom interest rates.

In London, the stock market was helped up by better-than-expected results from British oil giant BP, which reported that third-quarter net profit sank 34 percent, hit by lower oil prices and despite higher production.

The company said net profit, excluding the effect of stocks, slumped 50 percent from a year earlier to 4.98 billion dollars.

Shares in BP ended the day 4.81 percent higher at 594.40 pence.

Banking stocks instead tanked, with state-owned Royal Bank of Scotland falling 8.14 percent to 40.81 pence, Lloyds Banking Group down 6.16 percent at 83.84 points and Barclays giving up 3.63 percent to 339.80 pence.

Elsewhere in Europe, Amsterdam closed down 0.49 percent, Brussels plunged 2.01 percent and Madrid edged up 0.1 percent, while Zurich climbed 1.03 percent on the back of a rally by pharmaceutical companies Novartis and Roche.

In Shanghai, Chinese shares closed down 2.83 percent, with metal stocks falling on lower commodities prices and banks tumbling on profit-taking.

And in Mumbai, Indian shares tumbled 2.31 percent, with rate-sensitive bank and property stocks hit by fears of higher interest rates later this year.