It has been an eventful start to the calendar year with key announcements coming out from several countries. The most market sensitive announcement in January was from the European Central Bank (ECB). As speculated by the market for several months now, ECB president Mario Draghi announced the European Union’s version of quantitative easing (QE), calling it an “expanded asset purchase programme”. This entails expanding its current (private sector) asset purchasing program to include sovereign bonds issued by euro area central governments. The program is expected to make monthly asset purchases of €60 billion.
