Pound weaker on BofE bond purchases

Pound weaker on BofE bond purchases

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The pound weakened Thursday as some equities markets saw declines and after the Bank of England began to purchase UK government bonds in a program of quantitative easing.

Yields on bonds there have declined since the program was disclosed last week after the Bank cut UK interest rates.

In late morning trade in New York, the pound traded at 92.52p to the euro while it took $1.3824 to buy a pound and the pound was worth ¥135.1742.

The Swiss franc also saw declines after the Swiss National Bank intervened to weaken the currency.

The Swiss central bank cut the interest rate there to 0.25 percent and it began to buy foreign currencies, while it announced that it will also start purchasing corporate bonds.

At nearly noon in New York, the Swiss franc traded at SFr1.5226 to the euro and at SFr1.1905 to the greenback.

The yen weakened versus the euro early after a report that Japan’s gross domestic product fell by an annualized 12.1 percent in the last quarter, its fastest decline in 35 years, but it later gained back some of its losses, with the Japanese currency trading at ¥125.0607 to the euro and at ¥97.785 to the US dollar.

The greenback traded at $1.2789 to the euro after the US Commerce Department reported that US retail sales fell in February, but only by 0.1 percent, less than had been anticipated.

The slight decline in sales came after a gain of 1.8 percent in January.