European stock markets largely finished lower Friday, with bank shares taking a hit after their U.S. peers kicked off a new earnings season, but regional equities on the whole marked their best weekly performance in more than two months.

Chinese equity markets tumbled shortly after trading began on Monday, dragged down by a plunge in small-cap stocks after an injection of liquidity by the nation's central bank spooked investors. On Monday, the People's Bank of Bank pumped a net 140 billion yuan ($20.68 billion) to the interbank market, the biggest such injection since June 6, ahead of a key data release, sending investors rushing to reposition their portfolios.

U.S. stocks closed higher Friday to score fresh records, following a mixed batch of corporate bank results and poor data on retail-sales and inflation, which led market participants to believe the Federal Reserve is firmly back in a dovish frame of mind.