British Pound weakens vs EUR for 2nd consecutive day

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Category: Exchange Rates

Published on Tuesday, 23 August 2011 13:43

Written by Will Peters

The UK currency also lost momentum versus a basket of currencies on the exchange rate markets today.

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The pound to euro exchange rate is 0.490% lower with 1 GBP = 1.1413 EUR.

The pound dollar exchange rate is 0.140% higher with 1 GBP = 1.6508 USD.

"The British Pound weakened against the Euro for a second day on Tuesday, while the UK currency also lost momentum versus a basket of currencies," says exchange rate analysts Adam Solomon at Tor Fx.

The Australian Dollar strengthened against the majors, as Asian stocks rallied for the first time in four days and risk appetite improved, improved demand for higher-yielding currencies.

The Dollar, Yen and Swiss Franc subsequently declined and the move was exaggerated by reports that Chinese manufacturing performed better than expected last month.

In the Euro-zone, services and manufacturing PMIs held steady in August at the slowest pace in almost two years, adding to signs that the recovery is losing momentum, as concerns escalate that the sovereign debt crisis is spreading to other high deficit nations.

Equity markets latest

Looking at the markets we see that the FTSE 100 has relinquished much of the ground gained in morning trade.

Better-than-expected earnings reports also helped to boost miners this morning.

Chilean miner Antofagasta was up 3.4% after reporting a 54% rise in first-half earnings to 696.2 million, in line with analysts' forecasts.

Other miners trading significantly higher this morning were Xstrata, whose shares jumped 3.3% to 694.8p; Glencore, which rose 3.1% to 366p and BHP Billiton, 2.7% higher at 1931p.