LONDON (Reuters) – The Bank of England sold 3.097 billion pounds ($3.77 billion) of long-dated and index-linked gilts on Friday, taking to 17.1 billion pounds the total volume of these bonds it has sold in three weeks of sales to unwind earlier emergency purchases.
The BoE has now sold almost 90% of the 19.3 billion pounds of government bonds it bought between Sept. 28 and Oct. 14, when it stepped in to stabilise the market after prices slumped after September’s mini-budget.
Sales reflect the volume of demand, and are not pre-determined, unlike the BoE’s recent auctions to sell a total 6 billion pounds of short- and medium-dated gilts bought under its main quantitative easing programme.
The BoE rejected 346.7 million pounds of bids submitted by investors during Friday’s purchase window.
The BoE is due to resume sales of these gilts in the week starting Jan. 9.
($1 = 0.8221 pounds)
(Reporting by David Milliken; Editing by William Schomberg)
