Euro Touches 2-Year Low Before Regional Finance Ministers Meet
By Kristine Aquino
July 9 (Bloomberg) -- The euro touched its lowest level in
two years before regional finance ministers gather in Brussels
today to discuss crisis-fighting measures adopted by heads of
government at a summit last month.
The 17-nation currency weakened versus most of its 16 major
counterparts before a bill sale in Italy this week. The yen
advanced against all of its most-traded peers after Japan
released trade data for May and as Asian stocks extended losses
in global equity markets from last week, boosting demand for
haven assets. Australia’s dollar fell for a second day after
Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said downward pressure on the economy
is still “relatively large.”
“The risk around the finance ministers’ meeting is that we
see more cracks appearing in European unity and perhaps a delay
in implementation of the measures agreed on at the summit,”
said Mike Jones, a Wellington-based currency strategist at Bank
of New Zealand Ltd. “That’s taking some toll on the euro.”
The euro earlier slid to as low as $1.2251, the weakest
since July 2010, before trading at $1.2281 as of 9:12 a.m. in
Tokyo, 0.1 percent lower than the close on July 6. The shared
currency lost 0.3 percent to 97.65 yen. The yen gained 0.2
percent to 79.52 per dollar. The so-called Aussie declined 0.1
percent to $1.0205.
The MSCI Asia Pacific Index of shares dropped 0.7 percent.
At a summit in June, euro-region leaders agreed to relax
conditions on emergency loans for Spanish banks.
“We have to move quickly on banking supervision and we
have to move quickly on the direct recapitalization of Spanish
banks,” French Finance Minister Pierre Moscovici said
yesterday.
Japan’s current-account surplus was 215.1 billion yen ($2.7
billion) in May, the Ministry of Finance said in Tokyo today.
That compares with a median estimate for an excess of 493.1
billion yen in a Bloomberg News survey of economists.
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