ECB FIRM ON ANGLO IRISH NOTES - The governing council of the European Central Bank kept interest rates on hold at 1% in Frankfurt yesterday. The ECB president Mario Draghi said that the bank noted last week's deal to swap the Anglo promissory note repayment for a government bond of equivalent value. Underling the ECB's distance from the arrangement, he said it was a "completely Irish affair" and said the bank expects Ireland to make future repayments on the promissory note according to the agreed schedule. He said Irish people "have undergone a hard and harsh fiscal consolidation programme and from all angles and deserve to be praised for their efforts".
Eoin Fahy, chief economist at Kleinwort Benson Investors, says the ECB firmly said that it has no intention of writing off any of the former Anglo Irish Bank's debt as doing so would mean funding the government - which it is not allowed to do. He said the very firm refusal from Mario Draghi was not surprising.
Mr Fahy says that overall sentiment towards Europe is much better than it had been some months ago, however, Spain is still causing some problems for investors. He states that Spain is simply not going in the right direction. But despite the Spanish concerns, he says the euro zone is still a very long way from where it was a few months ago when an out-and-out crisis was emerging with emergency euro zone meetings every other week.
On Ireland, the economist says the country's reputation in the US is much stronger than at home and in Europe and he states that Ireland is not really a concern in the US any more. While he acknowledges there is still a euro zone crisis, he says there is now a less extreme level of crisis.
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MORNING BRIEFS - Traffic figures are out this morning for Aer Lingus. Last month the total number of passengers the airline flew increased by 8.2%, over March last year, to 809,000 passengers. Over the year to March, total passenger numbers were also 8.2% higher at just over 2 million. In the year to March the number of long haul passengers was 12% higher at 167,000. Short haul numbers were up by 6.2% at 1.7 million.
*** JPMorgan's Jamie Dimon said 2011 was a good year, but that "contrived" banking regulations are slowing the US's economic recovery. He was speaking overnight as figures revealed he is the world's highest paid banker - the investment bank's chief executive was paid $23m last year. Dimon's pay for instance, was more than double rival Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein, whose pay likely dropped to $9m for 2011, down nearly $4m from the year before. The only CEO who was even close to Dimon was Wells Fargo's John Stumpf, who got a total pay package of just under $20m.
*** Asian shares fell on this morning after a weaker-than-expected Spanish bond sale raised concerns about funding difficulties for weaker euro zone countries.
