European shares pull back as oil drop weighs; Pearson rallies

MILAN (Reuters) - A drop in oil prices weighed on European shares on Friday though main regional indexes held near recent highs after a week of gains spurred by easing political worries, strong earnings and supportive macro data.

The oil & gas index was the biggest sectoral faller, down 0.9 percent as crude fell further as concerns about global oversupply wiped out all of the price gains since OPEC's move to cut output.

BP, Total and Royal Dutch Shell were the biggest single-stock weights in Europe, dragging the pan-European STOXX 600 index down 0.3 percent by 0714 GMT, while the UK'S FTSE 100 was down 0.2 percent.

France's CAC dropped 0.5 percent ahead of the presidential runoff vote on Sunday pitting centrist Emmanuel Macron as favourite against far-right rival Marine Le Pen.

Among outstanding movers, Pearson surged 14 percent after the global education company said it would cut more costs and consider selling its U.S. school courseware business in the latest attempt to restructure.

Well-received results lifted shares in Vestas and Smith & Nephew, while Moncler fell following its results late on Thursday.

Almost half of European companies have reported their earnings so far with 74 percent beating analyst expectations and 6 percent meeting them, pointing to overall earnings growth of nearly 17 percent in the first quarter of this year, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S data.

(Reporting by Danilo Masoni, editing by Kit Rees)