By Sara Sjolin, MarketWatch

LONDON (MarketWatch) -- European stock markets traded mostly higher on Friday, recovering from small losses seen the prior day, as investors welcomed upbeat German business-confidence data.

The Stoxx Europe 600 index climbed 0.3% to 323.29, bringing the benchmark out of negative territory for the week and setting it on track for a 0.1% weekly advance.

Shares of Novartis AG (NVS) added 2.4% after the Swiss drug maker announced a $5 billion share buyback to start immediately.

Whitbread PLC gained 3.4% after J.P. Morgan Cazenove lifted the coffee shop and restaurant operator to overweight from neutral on the back of "recent strong U.K. macro trends."

Shares of Suedzucker AG lost 2.7% after HSBC cut the sugar producer to neutral from overweight. On Thursday, the firm, tumbled 9.2% after cutting its fiscal-year earnings outlook as sugar production has turned out weaker than expected.

More broadly, investors digested the latest round of data out of Germany. The Ifo business-climate index rose to 109.3 in November, beating expectations of a 107.8 reading and rising from the 107.4 seen in October. The current-situations and expectations indexes also climbed.

Earlier in the morning, data confirmed growth in Europe's largest economy slowed to 0.3% in the third quarter from 0.7% in the prior three-month period.

Germany's DAX 30 index rose 0.1% to 9,207.43.

France's CAC 40 index added 0.5% to 4,274.08, while the U.K.'s FTSE 100 index put on 0.2% to 6,691.00.

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