Pound Falls As Abu Dhabi Sheikh Offloads Barclays

The pound is around a cent below yesterday's $1.6445 close against the dollar this morning as the FTSE declined on news that Abu Dhabi's Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed al-Nahyan said he planned to offload his his 1.3bn-share holding in Barclays Bank.

Barclays shares fell over 14% to 270.50 pence on the news, and the FSTE 100 was down 58.86 points at 4447.33 on the news.

News from the Bank of England that home loan approvals rose to 43,201 in April from 40,038 in March was better than analysts had expected.

The dollar has bounced back a little from yesterday's heavy losses after GM filed for the largest manufacturing bankruptcy in US history. Still, throwing another $30 billion of taxpayers money at GM, on top of the $20 billion they've already had, could drag the dollar lower in the long run.

At 11am the pound was $1.6388 and one euro was worth 86.47 pence.