Pound hits record low versus yen

Story link: Pound hits record low versus yen

The pound fell to a record low in relation to the Japanese yen as the yen traded at ¥118.85 to the UK currency Friday on more bad news for the UK economy.

The UK Office for National Statistics said that the gross domestic product fell 1.5 percent in the fourth quarter, more of a decline than had been anticipated, after falling 0.6 percent in the third quarter.

This means that the UK economy meets the traditional definition of a recession with two consecutive quarters of decline.

The fourth-quarter drop was the biggest quarterly GDP decline in the UK since 1980 and came on contraction in both industry and the service sector.

Meanwhile, the euro was hurt by a report that both the manufacturing and services sectors in the Eurozone contracted in January for the eighth month in a row.

At just before 11 a.m. in New York, the pound had taken back some of its declines against the yen as the yen traded at ¥122.044 to the pound, while at the same time the yen traded at ¥114.4787 to the euro and at ¥89.385 to the US dollar.

The pound traded at 93.8p to the euro while it took $1.2807 to buy a euro and $1.3654 to buy a pound.