448 billion up in smoke for the Swiss National Bank – Dagens Industri

Updated 2015-07-31 12:38. Published 2015-07-31 12:37

          Swiss Central Bank Chairman Thomas Jordan
            Photo: Peter Klaunzer
         
       

 Swiss central bank’s fateful decision to drop the peg to the euro was expensive for the bank – a staggering expensive. Half-year loss for the canton-owned bank totaling to 448 billion.
 

The Swiss Central Bank unexpected decision early this year to drop the peg of the domestic currency against the euro has resulted in a half-year loss of 50.1 billion Swiss francs. It writes MarketWatch. The sum is equivalent to 448 billion.

It was primarily Swiss franc hearty appreciation against the euro, which constitute the largest part of the central bank’s foreign exchange reserves who was behind the loss.

The Bank also reported , a loss of 3.2 billion Swiss francs, approximately 29 billion on its holdings of gold, which is denominated in dollars.

It was in mid-January that the Swiss franc were to climb by 41 percent in a single day after the country’s central bank released peggningen of the currency against the euro. The rush corresponded to one of the largest currency movements ever among the world’s major currencies since the collapse of the Bretton Woods system in 1971. For

Swiss central bank, usually ‘the SNB, is a publicly listed company and has also private shareholders. More than half of the shares owned by the country’s cantons and its banks.