London Markets Lose $164Bln In Minutes After Vote For Brexit
MEP: As the Brexit shock sank in, the pound took a heavy hammering, with the currency alone falling from its highest point against the dollar this year as London’s FTSE index shed $164 billion of its value in the space of 10 minutes of trading on Friday.
Ratings agency Standard and Poor’s threatened to downgrade the UK’s rating, which is currently triple A.
The pound, which trades around-the-clock, fell 12% against the dollar, from $1.50 to below $1.35 in six hours.
London’s FTSE fell six percent in early deals, having shed USD$164 billion in 600 dramatic seconds. The city’s banking stocks lost $60 billion, USA Today reported.
As demand mounted, Thomas Cook suspended its online exchange in order to have enough sterling to serve the flood of customers at its outlets. Even then, the travel group put a 1,000-pound per person limit on the amount it would exchange for foreign currency.
Germany and France’s CAC 40 dropped by 7.5 and nine percent respectively on Friday. Brexit dealt an even bigger blow to southern European economies, as Italian and Spanish markets fell by over 11 percent.
Britons voted to leave the EU referendum with the result of 51.90 percent equal to 17,410,742 of million while roughly 48.10 percent equal to 16,141,241 of people voted to stay in the union.
