BoE Governor Bailey sees no risk to UK banks

Andrew Bailey, governor of the Bank of England, as well as two other BoE members (Sam Woods and Dave Ramsden) appeared before the Treasury Select Committee today for a hearing on Silicon Valley Bank collapse. Bailey noted that collapse of SVB was the fastest banking failure since Barings Bank failure, which collapsed in 1995 following massive 827 million GBP loss incurred by trader Nick Leeson. However, those two cases cannot be compared as Barings failed due to rogue trader actions while SVB collapsed due to bank run and poor interest rate risk management. Speaking on Credit Suisse, Bailey said that problems of Swiss bank were company-specific and should not be seen as a risk for domestic banks. Overall, Bailey said that does not think that any of the features of recent banking failings (SVB and CS) are causing stress in the UK financial system. He said, however, that we are in a period of heightened tensions in the markets and higher levels of alertness are needed.

Bailey's comments today were in-line with his remarks yesterday, when he noted that UK rate setters are unlikely to be distracted from fighting inflation by troubles of the global banking system. GBP saw some weakness following Bailey's comments today but the move immediately after remarks was barely noticeable. Taking a look at GBPUSD chart at D1 interval, we can see that the pair has reached the resistance zone marked with 50% retracement of the downward move launched in June 2021. Pair attempted to break above it last week but failed and today's attempt also looks to be under question. GBPUSD erased gains from earlier today, painting a long upper wick on D1 interval. However, should we see a break above this zone, the 1.2440 area, marked with local highs from previous months, could be the next target for buyers. On the other hand, failure to break above could see the price pull back towards the support zone marked with 38.2% retracement and 200-session moving average (purple line).

Source: xStation5