By Lucy Meakin Sept. 14 (Bloomberg) -- The euro rose the most in a week against the dollar and strengthened versus the yen as European stocks surged amid optimism the region’s debt crisis may still be contained. The 17-nation currency advanced against all but one of 16 major counterparts tracked by Bloomberg. The European Central Bank bought Italian bonds today, according to five people with knowledge of the transactions, who declined to be identified because the deals are confidential. Caijing magazine reported that China is still willing to buy bonds of nations hit by the debt crisis, citing Zhang Xiaoqiang, a vice chairman of the National Development and Reform Commission. “Equity markets are leading foreign exchange at the moment and they’ve turned around,” said Chris Walker, a foreign- exchange strategist at UBS AG in London. “We’re still very, very cautious about events in the euro zone in particular.” The euro rose 0.3 percent to $1.3724 as of 7:34 a.m. in New York, after gaining as much as 0.5 percent, the most since Sept. 7. The currency appreciated 0.2 percent to 105.42 yen. The yen strengthened 0.2 percent to 76.80 per dollar. The Stoxx Europe 600 Index gained 1.4 percent, and futures on the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index added 0.8 percent. --Editors: Nicholas Reynolds, Matthew Brown To contact the reporter on this story: Lucy Meakin in London at lmeakin1@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Daniel Tilles at dtilles@bloomberg.net

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