Europe shares end steady; Barclays offsets CS jolt

By Ana Nicolaci da Costa

LONDON, Feb 19 (Reuters) - European shares ended slightly higher on Tuesday as upbeat comments from Britain's Barclays (BARC.L: Quote, Profile, Research) soothed investors fearing more losses in the financial sector after a shock writedown from Credit Suisse (CSGN.VX: Quote, Profile, Research).

The FTSEurofirst 300 index closed up 0.17 percent at 1,337.54 points with oil stocks among top performers as crude surged. BP (BP.L: Quote, Profile, Research) rose 0.6 percent, Royal Dutch Shell (RDSa.L: Quote, Profile, Research) was up 1.2 percent and Total (TOTF.PA: Quote, Profile, Research) gained 1.2 percent.

Barclays raised its writedown on the value of risky assets to 1.6 billion pounds, after posting results in line with expectations, prompting sharp losses in early trade.

But analysts said the relatively small increase in writedowns, and a 10 percent dividend rise, were good news for the sector, and Barclays' comments that it was comfortable with the current level of writedowns lifted its stock to close 3.7 percent higher.

"People's first reaction to Barclays' results was they look alright but are they conservative enough. And I think the management at the analyst meeting appears to have been pretty robust in saying 'Look, we've looked at this very closely and we think we are okay'," said Andrew Bell, European strategist at Rensburg Sheppard.

Banks were mixed with HSBC (HSBA.L: Quote, Profile, Research) and Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS.L: Quote, Profile, Research) up but BNP Paribas (BNPP.PA: Quote, Profile, Research) down ahead of its results on Wednesday.

Credit Suisse dropped 6.6 percent after news it wrote $2.85 billion off the value of its asset-backed investments and suspended some traders after finding pricing errors on its books.