The 16-nation currency declined for a fourth day, falling to a one-month low of $1.3055, and dropped for a second day against the yen. Futures on the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index declined 0.1 percent. Europe’s Dow Jones Stoxx 600 Index added 1.1 percent as higher memory-chip prices lifted technology shares, overshadowing sales at Carrefour SA and Accor SA that trailed analysts’ estimates.

Trichet said today in a speech in Tokyo that “ambiguity” among central bankers will delay the economy’s recovery and undermine investor confidence. Axel Weber, the president of the Bundesbank, said on April 15 he’s against lowering the benchmark interest rate to below 1 percent, while policy makers including George Provopoulos, the ECB Council member from Greece, have suggested they may support deeper cuts to revive the region.

“There are very public differences amongst ECB Governing Council members,” a team of UBS AG currency strategists including London-based Gareth Berry wrote in a report today. “Risk-seeking investors will unlikely favor a late-recovery economy such as the eurozone.”

While the euro showed increasing concern that Europe’s economy will lag behind the U.S., the cost of borrowing dollars in London headed for a fifth week of declines, the longest stretch since January, after Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. reported better-than-forecast earnings.

Libor Falls

The London interbank offered rate, or Libor, at which banks say they can borrow dollars, has dropped three basis points this week to 1.10 percent, the lowest level since Jan. 15, according to the British Bankers’ Association. The rate fell for the past 14 days. The Singapore rate, or Sibor, declined 4 basis points to 1.10 percent this week.

U.S. futures suggested the S&P 500 may extend its sixth straight weekly gain. The benchmark index for American equities, which dropped as much as 25 percent this year, is now down 4.2 percent. The Federal Reserve and Treasury pledged $12.8 trillion to help end the first global recession since World War II.

New York-based Citigroup, which was propped up by $45 billion in government bailout funds, posted a $1.6 billion profit today, ending a five-quarter losing streak. Fairfield, Connecticut-based General Electric Co. reported a 35 percent drop in first-quarter profit, less than analysts estimated.

Analysts expect that earnings at S&P 500 companies decreased for the seventh straight quarter in the January-to- March period, the longest stretch of declines since at least the Great Depression.

Technology Shares

European technology shares climbed as prices of the benchmark dynamic random access memory, or DRAM, chips increased 7.6 percent to the highest since Oct. 14. Tokyo-based Toshiba Corp., Japan’s largest semiconductor maker, also posted a smaller than-forecast loss, helping to lift the MSCI Asia Pacific Index 0.7 percent.

Geneva-based STMicroelectronics NV, Europe’s largest chipmaker, added 3.7 percent. Infineon Technologies AG, the region’s second-biggest maker of semiconductors, gained 8.4 percent. Results from Paris-based Carrefour and Accor limited gains today in the Stoxx 600, which has slipped 2.1 percent this year.

Stocks in developing nations fluctuated between gains and losses, with the MSCI World Emerging Markets Index losing 0.4 percent after earlier gaining 0.8 percent.

Gazprom Bond Sale

OAO Gazprom, Russia’s gas export monopoly, is selling as much as $2 billion of bonds today, the first notes in dollars from a Russian company in nine months, according to a banker involved in the transaction. The bonds will have a coupon of between 9.25 and 9.5 percent, said the banker, who declined to be identified because the issue is private.

Crude oil for May delivery fell 19 cents, or 0.4 percent, to $49.79 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Oil is heading for a second consecutive weekly decline, its worst performance since February. Gold for immediate delivery dropped $6.78, or 0.8 percent, to $868.92 an ounce in London, heading for a fourth weekly decline.

 SOURCE: Bloomberg