Euro zone lending improves further in November

FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Lending to companies and households across the euro zone picked up again in November, recording year-on-year growth of 0.9 percent and 1.4 percent respectively, the European Central Bank said on Wednesday.

The development is positive news for the euro zone's economy, which has long struggled with slack credit, and indicates some success for the ECB's money-printing scheme to buy chiefly government bonds.

The ECB also said, however, that the annual growth rate of the M3 measure of money circulating in the euro zone, which is often an indicator of future economic activity, had lost pace.

Growth in M3, which includes items such as deposits with a longer maturity, holdings in money market funds and some debt securities, was 5.1 percent in November.

This result compares unfavourably with 5.3 percent growth in October and is also lower than analysts polled by Reuters had expected.

(Reporting by John O'Donnell and Kirsti Knolle; Editing by Alison Williams)