FRANKFURT (MNI) – The European Central Bank announced on Monday
that it had settled no bond purchases in the week ending July 20, thus
extending its bond-buying pause to 19 consecutive weeks.
As a result, the cumulative total still on the bank’s balance sheet
remained at E211.5 billion. As usual, the central bank said it will seek
to sterilize the entire amount through a quick tender to collect
one-week term deposits.
The deposit tender, to be held Tuesday at 0930 GMT/0530 ET, will be
conducted as a variable-rate operation with a maximum bid rate of 0.75%
after last week’s rate cut, the ECB said. The fixed-term deposits can be
used as collateral in the Eurosystem’s credit operations.
The ECB said it would hold another term-deposit tender on Tuesday
July 24th to sterilize SMP bonds still on its books.
Speaking before the Spanish parliament last week, ECB Governing
Council member Luis Linde said that it was “not impossible” that the SMP
could be reopened at a later date “under some circumstances”.
“It’s not going to happen now, as far as I know, in the next, let’s
say, next weeks, but this program is not …. forgotten,” Linde said.
“It’s there and it can be reactivated at some moment.”
— Frankfurt bureau: +49 69 720 142; email: frankfurt@marketnews.com —
[TOPICS: M$$CR$,M$X$$$,M$XDS$,MN$MM$,M$$EC$]
