Scotland has voted against independence with the latest results at 55.3 per cent voting ‘No’ against a ‘Yes’ vote of 44.7 per cent, prompting the pound to bounce back.
The FTSE 100 was up 42.25 per cent at 8.06am to sit at 6,862 following the results of the Scottish referendum.
Azad Zangana, Schroders’ European economist, said: “The news will come as a relief for investors and financial markets, reflected by an early morning bounce in GBP versus EUR and USD. Indeed, sterling has risen from 1.62 against the US dollar at the start of the week to a peak of 1.65 this morning.
“The prospects of months of messy negotiations, uncertainty over the division of national assets and debt, and the currency arrangements of an independent Scotland had been weighing on the confidence of investors over the past few weeks, especially as polls had tightened.”
Wealth manager St James’s Place led the biggest risers on the FTSE 100 this morning, opening up 5.07 per cent to 725.50 pence, followed by the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), up 3.44 per cent to 369.50 pence at 8.05am.
Jason Hollands, managing director of Bestinvest, added: “While the major uncertainties around a potential splitting of national debt, the currency and Scotland’s EU membership will quickly evaporate, attention now turns to the yet to be fleshed out ‘devo-max’ proposals and the blowback for the rest of the UK.
“The extent to which Scotland will be able to set its own tax rates will be of particular interest to our clients in Scotland but ‘devo-max’ will prove a watershed moment that opens the way for greater federalisation across the UK.”
