Europe stocks lower as markets digest US, EU news

Europe's main stock markets fell on Thursday, as investors digested new Federal Reserve monetary easing measures and a long-awaited EU deal to create a single bank supervisor. London's FTSE 100 index of top companies nudged 0.25 percent lower to 5,931.14 points, while Frankfurt's DAX 30 index shed 0.65 percent to 7,565.16 and in Paris the CAC 40 lost 0.34 percent to 3,634.43 points. "European stocks are trading little changed this morning despite the Fed expanding their bond purchasing program in a major way," said ETX Capital trader Markus Huber. The Fed said overnight that it would replace its "Operation Twist" bond swapping programme with $45 billion a month in straight bond buys, on an open-ended basis. That comes on top of the $40-billion-a-month purchasing announced in September. The US central bank added that it would not lift interest rates until unemployment was under control. In the early hours of Thursday, meanwhile, European Union finance ministers brokered a deal to create a single bank supervisor with powers to close down lenders right across the eurozone, several officials said. The "historic" agreement, after 14 hours of talks and less than 12 hours from the start of a summit of EU leaders, is a key element of plans to establish a banking union. "EU finance ministers agreed over night on the framework for the European Central Bank to become the single supervisory body," said Alpari analyst Craig Erlam. "The road map will now be drawn up at the EU summit today and tomorrow, which should result in the ECB supervising all major banking institutions in the eurozone by 2014. "This will include all banks that have more than 30 billion euros ($39 billion) in assets or have a large presence in a country."