Investing.com - The Bank of England kept its benchmark interest rate unchanged in June and announced no change to its asset purchase facility program, it said on Thursday.
The BoE said it was holding the benchmark interest rate at 0.50%, in a widely expected move. The rate has been held at that level since March 2009.
The central bank also said it was to maintain the stock of asset purchases financed by the issuance of central bank reserves at £375 billion.
The minutes of the meeting of the central bank’s monetary policy committee will be published on Wednesday, June 17.
GBP/USD was trading at 1.5435 from around 1.5432 ahead of the announcement, while EUR/GBP was at 0.7359 from 0.7362 earlier.
Meanwhile, European stock markets were broadly lower. London’s FTSE 100 slumped 1.3%, the EURO STOXX 50 dropped 1.5%, France's CAC 40 lost 1.75%, while Germany's DAX slumped 1.5%.