Wellington, Aug 31 NZPA - The New Zealand sharemarket gave up early gains to close down today as Asian markets headed lower.

The 5.4 percent drop in China's market at midday was hard to ignore even though local news was positive with the National Bank Business Outlook survey recording a big increase in confidence.

The benchmark NZSX-50 index closed down 11.339 points, or 0.365 percent, at 3098.003.

Turnover was worth $107 million, of which $32.5m. There were 45 rises and 44 falls among the 119 stocks traded.

"We got off to a pretty reasonable start but we lost ground this afternoon on the back of weaker Asian markets, in particular China," Grant Williamson, director at Hamilton, Hindin, Greene, said.

The standout was Sir Ron Brierley's Guinness Peat Group, which lifted 5.2 percent to 84 after reported a half year loss of Stg22 million ($NZ53 million).

Mr Williamson said the result, while disappointing, was better than expected.

The leading shares reflected the negative sentiment, with Fletcher Building down 16c to 786 and Contact down 15c to 625.

Telecom fell 4c to 275 on a day in which the Commerce Commission opened an investigation into loyalty offers made by Telecom's wholesale business unit. Mr Williamson said the news did not have much impact on the share price.

Auckland Airport fell 3c to 173, Tourism Holdings fell 1c to 54 and NZX fell 15c to 760. Fisher and Paykel Healthcare fell 7c to 325 but the appliances stock was unchanged at 80.

Hellaby rose 18c to 135, Hallenstein Glasson rose 5c to 280 and Air NZ rose 1c to 125.

Pyne Gould Corp rose 28c to 142. The company's expectation that a capital raising will be fully underwritten is being viewed positively, though the company moved to clarify that shareholder George Kerr is not an underwriter.

In the United States, stocks mostly slipped on Friday (local time) after a weak consumer sentiment report offset positive news from bellwethers Dell Inc and Intel Corp.

Support from the two companies, however, let the Nasdaq eke out a tiny gain.

The Dow Jones industrial average declined 0.4 percent to end at 9544.20, the Standard & Poor's 500 Index lost only 0.2 percent to 1028.93, while the Nasdaq Composite Index inched up 0.1 percent to close at 2028.77.

For the week, the Dow advanced 0.4 percent, while the S&P 500 gained 0.3 percent and the Nasdaq rose 0.4 percent.