LONDON- The market-value of UK government bonds on the Tradeweb platform with negative yields stood at more than one trillion pounds ($1.24 trillion), or almost 45% of the total market as of the end of May, data released on Monday showed.
Yields on short-dated British government bonds or gilts have pushed below 0% in recent weeks, reflecting speculation that the Bank of England could be the next central bank to push its official rates below zero.
According to numbers provided by the electronic trading platform, 1.07 trillion pounds worth of gilts had negative yields as of the end of May out of a total market worth around 2.4 trillion pounds.
The data on UK government bonds was provided by Tradeweb on request, therefore a comparison with April numbers is unavailable.
The market value of negative-yielding euro zone government bonds on Tradeweb's platform rose to around 4.73 trillion euros ($5.27 trillion) or roughly 56% of a total market worth, from 8.4 trillion euros as of the end of May. That was up from around 4.5 trillion euros at the end of April.
The market value of investment grade corporate bonds with a negative yield stood at 99 billion euros at the end of May, up from 71 billion at the end of April, Tradeweb said.
($1 = 0.8061 pounds)
($1 = 0.8979 euros)
(Reporting by Dhara Ranasinghe Editing by Tommy Wilkes) ((Dhara.Ranasinghe@thomsonreuters.com; +442075422684;))
