Spanish bailout weakens sterling against euro

Published: 11 June, 2012

The bailout of Spanish banks over the weekend to the tune of €100bn led to the sterling opening half a cent weaker against the euro and nearly one cent stronger against the US$.

Currency Rates

EURO/GBP - 1.2306
US$/GBP - 1.5551
CHF/GBP - 1.4791
CAN$/GBP - 1.5882
AUS$/GBP - 1.5586
ZAR/GBP - 12.8645
JPY/GBP - 123.72
HKD/GBP - 12.063
NZD/GBP - 2.0031
SEK/GBP - 10.9590
AED/GBP - 5.7134
US$/EURO - 1.2630
INR/GBP - 85.93

This contrasts with Friday where sterling remained fairly stable against the euro, but weakened against the US dollar as data released showed the change in the price of goods and raw materials purchased by manufacturers missed expectations dropping by -2.5%. The main release in a quiet week in the UK is the monthly manufacturing production figures while the governor of the Bank of England is also speaking.

The euro was fairly weak on Friday; but has strengthened over the weekend following the news that the Euro zone ministers agreed to bail out Spain on Saturday to the tune of €100 billion to help its struggling banking sector. It is fairly quiet week on the data front in Europe which includes the benchmark 10 year bond auction from Germany, Consumer Price Index (CPI) and the ECB monthly bulletin is also released. The main focus will remain firmly on Spain and Greece this week with the second Greek vote on Sunday and we will also have to see how the markets will react in the long term to the news of the Spanish bailout.

The dollar was fairly strong on Friday, bought up as a safe haven currency while trade balance data in the US was released as expected. President Obama was also speaking mirroring the concern of the President of the Federal Bank that the problems in Europe put the US economy at risk. A busy week for data in the US includes retail sales figures, monthly Producer Price Index data, the change in the number of people claiming unemployment benefits and figures depicting the change in the price of goods and services purchased by consumers. With so much data released there is the potential for a lot of volatility.

Elsewhere, Japanese data released on Friday included worse than expected current account figures and final GDP price index; but quarterly final GDP data was better than anticipated. Trade balance data from Australia was better than expected; but trade balance data from Canada was worse than expected and the change in the number of employed people during the previous month in Canada also missed expectations. On Saturday morning, a string of bad data out of China was also released including weaker than expected inflation data, weak PPI figures and worse than expected retail sales; however, trade balance data release on Sunday was better than the markets had predicted. The main releases this week are the official rate decisions, press conferences and monetary policy statements that follow soon after for Switzerland, Japan and New Zealand.

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