News Release
Gilt-Edged Auctions: January to March 1998
30 December 1997
In the fourth quarter of the 1997-98 financial year, there will be two single auctions of gilt-edged stock as set out below:
Wednesday, 28 January 1998: a new long conventional stock maturing in December 2028*.
Wednesday, 25 March 1998: 7¼% Treasury Stock 2007**.
The amounts to be auctioned and the terms of the auctions will be announced at 3.30 pm on Tuesday, 20 January 1998 for the January auction; and at 3.30 pm on Tuesday, 17 March 1998 for the March auction.
Details of progress with gilt sales were announced on 10 December 1997. Copies of that announcement are available on request from the Bank of England, as are copies of the record of meetings with gilt- edged market makers and end investors.
* The new long conventional stock maturing in December 2028 will be strippable in due course but, to safeguard liquidity in the longer dated strips, it will only become strippable when £5,000 million nominal of the stock has been issued.
** The date of the March auction may be subject to change in the light of the timing of the Budget.
Notes to Editors
The 1997-98 Remit to the Bank of England issued by H M Government on 12 March 1997 set out the gilt issuance programme for the financial year 1997-98. The Remit provided for conventional gilt auctions to be held on broadly a monthly basis throughout the financial year but, in the light of the reduction in the forecast CGBR for 1997-98 announced in the Budget and, consequently, in the gilt sales requirement as announced by the Bank on 2 July 1997, the August 1997 and February 1998 auctions were cancelled. In addition, as was also announced by the Bank on 2 July 1997, the two dual stock auctions, which were due to be held in the third and fourth quarters of the 1997-98 financial year, were changed to single stock auctions. The revised auction calendar, therefore, provides for nine auction sales in the 1997-98 financial year of which seven are single stock auctions and two are dual stock auctions.
The official gilt strips facility was introduced on 8 December 1997; details of this facility are contained in the Bank of England’s paper issued on 8 October 1997, copies of which are available on request from the Bank (telephone 0171-601 3672).
