7
July
Banks Press UK To Issue Foreign Currency Debt
7 July 2009 Wall Street Journal
The U.K. Government is under growing pressure from bankers and asset managers to sell bonds in currencies other than sterling for the first time, to help support its massive borrowing program.
The U.K. has raised more than a quarter of the GBP220 billion of gilts, or government bonds, it needs to sell this year and next to finance spending, but many bankers and investors believe the Treasury will need to issue bonds in euros and other foreign currencies to help meet the Government's spending requirements.
Zeina Bignier, head of sovereign, supranational and public debt origination group at Societe Generale in Paris, said: "I think it would make a lot of sense for the UK Debt Management Office to diversify into other currency markets, because it has doubled its funding needs and I am not sure the domestic investor base is sufficient to absorb that supply."
