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Closing stock market indices

LONDON: Here is how major stock markets outside the United States ended on Wednesday.

LONDON - London's leading shares all but wiped away the previous day's losses as surging telecoms and firmer bank stocks lifted the FTSE 100 from Tuesday's 12-week closing low. The FTSE 100 closed at 6375.6 points, up 101.5 or 1.62 percent.

FRANKFURT - German DAX reversed previous session's losses with 2.35 percent telecoms-led surge, supported by positive start by Dow Jones industrial average. The DAX-30 index closed at 6969.37 points, up 159.73 or 2.35 percent.

PARIS - The Paris Bourse ended higher in a rally largely fuelled by telecom shares. Index heavyweights France Telecom and Vivendi shine. The CAC-40 index closed at 5646.32 points, up 48.82 or 0.87 percent.

ZURICH - The Swiss bourse closed slightly higher, unable to hold the psychologically important level of 7,000 points in the blue-chip Swiss Market Index index as profit-taking and a lack of follow-through buying erased most blue-chip gains. The Swiss market index closed at 6963.6 points, up 8.8 or 0.13 percent.

MILAN - Milan stocks closed higher, led by Tecnost and other telecoms stocks which gained in advance of an eagerly-antipicated presentation to analysts on Thursday and Friday. The All Share Mibtel index closed at 28402 points, up 211 or 0.75 percent.

AMSTERDAM - Dutch shares suffered, with the AEX index closing at 637.39 points, down 2.64 or 0.41 percent.

SYDNEY - The Australian stock market is closed for a national holiday. On Tuesday the benchmark All Ordinaries Index closed down 18 points or about 0.6 percent at 3,078.6.

JOHANNESBURG - Fierce futures-related selling pushed the South African stock market sharply down, but positive sentiment towards the bourse, tipped as the best performing emerging market this year, was still intact. The All-share index closed at 8656.5 points, down 125.3 or 1.43 percent. The All Gold index closed at 1098 points, down 38.8 or 3.41 percent, while the Industrial index closed at 9597.9 points, down 73.7 or 0.76 percent.-Reuters