LONDON, June 29 (Reuters) – Average daily turnover volume in British government bonds reached a record high of 47 billion pounds in the first quarter of the year, the Association for Financial Markets in Europe (AFME) said on Monday.
As the COVID-19 crisis sparked huge volatility in financial markets across the globe, traded volumes jumped across European sovereign bond markets.
According to an AFME report on European government bond markets, average daily trading volumes across the region rose just over 25% quarter-on-quarter in the first three months of 2020. That marked the highest quarterly trading volume since the first three months of 2017.
AFME said the week ended March 13 represented the most actively traded week in British gilts on its records, since the second quarter of 2016, with average daily trading volumes reaching 59 billion pounds.
Six of the top 10 weeks on record for largest traded volume of gilts took place in the first quarter of 2020, AFME said.
It added that 6 billion euros of green government bonds were issued in the first quarter via the re-opening of French and Dutch green bonds, with the Netherlands overtaking Belgium as the second largest European sovereign issuer of green bonds. (Reporting by Dhara Ranasinghe)
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