Pounds to US Dollar Exchange Rate Today - GBP EUR Breaks To Another New 16-Month High, GBP USD Rate Static

Published: Friday, 6 January 2012 09:04 BST - Written by John Cameron

STORY LINK Pounds to US Dollar Exchange Rate Today - GBP EUR Breaks To Another New 16-Month High, GBP USD Rate Static

The Pound Euro exchange rate (GBP EUR) is 1.2111. The Pound Dollar exchange rate (GBP USD) is 1.5512. The Pound Australian Dollar exchange rate (GBP AUD) is 1.5120.

The GBP EUR exchange rate has broken to a new 16-month high for the fifth consecutive session, during early trading today. The pairing touched off 1.2138 just before the European open, its highest level since 6th September, 2010.

The move has been driven by Euro weakness as institutional investors continued to shift out of Eurozone assets, as concerns grow over the region’s ongoing debt crisis. These fears were stoked by wider debt yields paid by France on their bonds during yesterday’s session. Market participants were also concerned when a minister in Spain’s fledgling centre-right government suggested that the extent of the troubled Iberian state’s ‘bad debts’ may be greater than had previously thought.

European debt concerns were not limited to the public sector; shares in leading Eurozone retail banks were also hit hard yesterday, with shares Italy’s UniCredit slumping by also 20%. Shares in France’s Societe Generale and Germany’s Commerzbank also lost significant ground on the day as concerns grew about the retail banking sector’s exposure to potential toxic government debts.

Elsewhere, the USD failed to strengthen to any major extent, in spite of a weak performance for Asian equities overnight. Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 index and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index both closed down by over 1% during last night’s session, as investors returned to ‘risk-off’ trading patterns. It’s likely that the lack of movement for the Greenback, in spite of the apparent risk-shift, is due to investors ‘sitting on their hands’ ahead of this afternoon’s US Non-Farm Payrolls data for December. Analysts are expecting the figure to show an improvement on November’s counterpart figure, which showed at 120,000. If last month’s number prints at less than 150,000, then global appetite for risk is likely to ebb further, causing support for the safe-haven US Dollar.


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