European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet is leaving a meeting of central bankers in Sydney early to attend an ECB council meeting, an official at the Reserve Bank of Australia said today.
It was not known if the ECB meeting was a scheduled event or an extraordinary meeting. There had been rumours last week, later denied, that the ECB would hold an extraordinary meeting to discuss sovereign debt problems in some euro zone countries.
Mr Trichet was originally scheduled to be in Sydney all Tuesday for an RBA symposium of central bankers and Wednesday for a seminar of central banks in the Euro Area and East Asia-Pacific.
The next scheduled meeting of the ECB Governing Council is set for February 18.
ECB officials were not immediately available to comment.
Snowballing concerns over large budget deficits in some euro zone countries such as Greece, Spain and Portugal have pushed their cost of borrowing higher in recent weeks and hurt the performance of risk assets globally.
Despite hard-hitting deficit reduction plans, question marks over their implementation have kept markets sensitive to any sign of a bailout by richer EU states.
Such worries have also weighed heavily on the single currency, dragging it down to a near nine-month low of $US1.3583 last Friday.
On Tuesday the euro remained under pressure at US$1.3652, but did edge up on news of Mr Trichet's changed travel plans.
Reuters
