Asian markets ended mixed on Thursday. Japan's Nikkei shed 0.3 per cent and Hong Kong's Hang Seng fell 0.6 per cent . But China's Shanghai Composite index edged up 0.2 per cent and South Korea's Kospi and Singapore's Strait Times index ended with marginal gains.Stocks in Europe inched up today, ahead of an auction of long-dated Italian bonds. Key benchmark indices, London's FTSE-100, France's CAC-40 and Germany's DAX rose between 0.2 percent and 0.5 percent in intra-day trade. The focus for markets will be an auction of 8.5 billion euros in Italian long-term bonds. The market got a brief boost on Wednesday following a successful auction in short-term paper, but the concern remains that the government will have trouble selling its longer-dated bonds, given the overall sovereign-debt crisis. Meanwhile, euro-zone debt worries resurfaced yesterday, after a report from the European Central Bank showed it had significantly boosted lending to banks. The ECB said its balance sheet soared to a record 2.73 trillion euros after lending to banks last week.