Pounds to EUR Exchange Rate Today - GBP EUR Spirals As S&P Downgrade France?s Credit Rating

January 16, 2012 - Written by David Woodsmith

STORY LINK Pounds to EUR Exchange Rate Today - GBP EUR Spirals As S&P Downgrade France?s Credit Rating

The Pound Euro exchange rate (GBP EUR) is 1.2080. The Pound Dollar exchange rate (GBP USD) is 1.5295. The Pound Australian Dollar exchange rate (GBP AUD) is 1.4838.

Friday 13th proved to be a black day for Europe’s single currency, as leading credit ratings agency Standard and Poor’s announcing just before the weekly close of the currency markets, that it was downgrading the credit ratings of nine Eurozone states. S&P stated that it had taken the action over fears about the downside risk to economic activity in the region because of the strident austerity measures taken by several economies in an attempt to balance their books.

The most significant of the states to be downgraded was France, which saw its rating pegged back a notch from AAA to AA+. This lead French Prime Minister Francois Fillon to defend his administration’s structural reforms in an address to the French people. Austria’s national debt suffered a similar ignominy to France’s, while Spain’s and Italy’s credit ratings were eased even further, to A and BBB+ respectively.

S&P had warned that it was reviewing the credit ratings of nearly all of the Eurozone’s economy, so their action on Friday was far from being a bolt from the blue. However, the announcement came in time for the market to deliver a snap-shot response late on Friday, which saw the GBP EUR exchange rate make a renewed run at its 16-month high, to trade up to 1.2097 before the close. Asian equities markets gave their response to the announcement last night, seeing Hong Kong’s Hang Seng lose 1.00% of its value, while Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 index lost even further ground, to close down by 1.43%.

Elsewhere, Sterling has started this week’s session on the back foot, following the release of a report by widely-respected think tank, the Ernst & Young ITEM Club, (ITEM is an acronym for Independent Treasury Economic Model, because the forecaster uses the same model as the UK Treasury). The report stated that Britain’s economy is probably in recession at the moment, following a contraction in growth during Q4 2011 and the likelihood of negative growth in the first three months of 2012. If these findings are confirmed by the Treasury’s official growth figure next week, then the Pound may come under considerable selling pressure.


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