Goldman’s O’Neill Abandons Prediction Swiss National Bank Will Raise EUR/CHF Floor

Jim O’Neill, chairman of Goldman Sachs Asset Management, has abandoned his forecast that the Swiss National Bank will take further actions to weaken the franc.

Mr. O’Neill previously predicted the SNB would raise its self-imposed floor for the euro from CHF1.20 to CHF1.25 this year as the strength of the franc undermined the nation’s growth outlook.

Yet the euro zone’s sovereign-debt crisis, which has escalated after a brief reprieve earlier this year, has fueled a continued flight out of euros into the franc, requiring the SNB to intervene aggressively. Over the past few months, the euro has hovered around the CHF1.20 level and at times briefly dropped below that limit.

“I think the target would stay where it is for the rest of the year,” said Mr. O’Neill in a phone interview Wednesday from his office in London. “Politics [have] become a lot more complicated” following the departure earlier this year of Philipp Hildebrand as the head of the Swiss central bank even as the economic factors to weaken the yen haven’t changed, he added.

via WSJ

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Alfonso Esparza

Alfonso Esparza

Senior Currency Analyst at Market Pulse
Alfonso Esparza specializes in macro forex strategies for North American and major currency pairs. Upon joining OANDA in 2007, Alfonso Esparza established the MarketPulseFX blog and he has since written extensively about central banks and global economic and political trends. Alfonso has also worked as a professional currency trader focused on North America and emerging markets. He has been published by The MarketWatch, Reuters, the Wall Street Journal and The Globe and Mail, and he also appears regularly as a guest commentator on networks including Bloomberg and BNN. He holds a finance degree from the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education (ITESM) and an MBA with a specialization on financial engineering and marketing from the University of Toronto.
Alfonso Esparza