BLBG:Pound Advances on House Prices, Bets U.K. Economy Will Improve
The pound rose after an industry report forecast U.K. house prices will accelerate next year and a Bank of England official said the economy will improve.
Sterling appreciated against all except two its 16 major counterparts as investors said Standard & Poor’s decision yesterday to lower the U.K.’s credit-rating outlook will have little impact. Ten-year gilts dropped for a sixth day after European Union leaders pledged to seek a joint strategy for handling failing banks, damping demand for safer investments.
“The global economic outlook has improved and my view is that the pound will benefit from that and it might be more resilient than many thought,” said Neil Jones, head of European hedge fund sales at Mizuho Corporate Bank Ltd. “Any setback from the S&P’s decision is likely to be short-lived because all it did was confirm what the market already knew.”
The pound climbed 0.1 percent to $1.6121 at 11:27 a.m. London time after rising to $1.6172 on Dec. 12, the strongest since Nov. 1. The U.K. currency was little changed at 81.24 pence per euro after sliding as much as 0.3 percent yesterday.
Bank of England Markets Director Paul Fisher told Reuters yesterday the U.K. economy will pick up slowly during next year and the deflation risk has subsided, reducing the need to “do asset purchases in large scale.”
U.K. home values will increase 2 percent in 2013 after a 1 percent gain this year, the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors said today. Still, the recovery will be “modest” because of the difficult environment, it said. A separate report from Acadametrics showed prices rose 0.2 percent in November.
Pound’s Advance
The pound has gained 1.3 percent this year, according to Bloomberg Correlation-Weighted Indexes, which track 10 developed-market currencies. The euro declined 1.7 percent and the dollar fell 2.8 percent.
S&P lowered its outlook on Britain’s AAA grade to negative from stable, meaning there is one-in-three chance it may cut the rating in the next two years, the agency said in a statement in London. This may happen if the U.K. economic and fiscal performance “weaken beyond our current expectations,” the rating company said.
“We don’t see it as significant” for gilts, said Stuart Thomson, who helps oversee $120 billion as a fund manager at Ignis Asset Management in Glasgow, Scotland. “A move from AAA to AA+ has lost its impact, if it ever had any. The impact on default is virtually meaningless.”
EU finance ministers meeting overnight in Brussels agreed to put the European Central Bank in charge of all euro-area lenders in a deal that paves the way for the currency bloc’s firewall fund to provide direct bailouts to banks.
The 10-year gilt yield climbed two basis points, or 0.02 percentage point, to 1.88 percent. The 1.75 percent bond due in September 2022 declined 0.14, or 1.40 pounds per 1,000-pound face amount, to 98.88. The yield has increased 13 basis points this week, the most since the period ended Oct. 19.
U.K. bonds handed investors a loss of 0.9 percent gain this month through yesterday, according to indexes compiled by Bloomberg and the European Federation of Financial Analysts Societies. German bonds fell 0.3 percent.
To contact the reporter on this story: Lukanyo Mnyanda in Edinburgh at lmnyanda@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Paul Dobson at pdobson2@bloomberg.net
