British Pound May Tank ‘as Low as $1.05’

The British pound plunged even further in early Monday trading, dropping an additional 3.3 percent against the dollar as investors and markets continued to fearfully assess the impact of Britain’s vote to leave the European Union. The currency dropped even lower than it did during the height of Friday’s Brexit panic, with sterling at a new three-decade low against the dollar, at $1.315. The slide came despite an early-morning attempt to reassure global financial markets by Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne, one of humiliated Prime Minister David Cameron’s closest allies. Indexes across Europe reflected the angst, with the U.K.’s FTSE 250 down 5 percent and shares in Royal Bank of Scotland at their the lowest level since January 2009, when the institution was being rescued by taxpayers during the financial crisis. Singapore bank DBS warned it was “premature to conclude that the worst is over,” adding that its worst-case scenario was for the pound to fall to $1.15-$1.25, or even “overshoot” that to as low as $1.05. Meanwhile, European nations are pressuring the U.K. to leave the European Union as quickly as possible. Speculation that the U.K. could seek a “do-over” second referendum is being widely dismissed as fantasy, despite the fact that an online petition has accrued more than three million signatures.