World currency pound sterling. The transition between pound sterling and United States dollar and its impact for central banks was described recently. In the period following the Bretton Woods Conference of 1944, exchange rates around the world were pegged to the United States dollar, which could be exchanged for a fixed amount of gold. This reinforced the dominance of the US dollar as a global currency. Since the collapse of the fixed exchange rate regime and the gold standard and the institution of floating exchange rates following the Smithsonian Agreement in 1971, most currencies around the world have no longer been pegged
Currency swap currency exchange have since become rare, savings are still available from back-to-back loans due to comparative advantage. The first formal currency swap, as opposed to the then used parallel loans structure, was transacted by Citicorp International Bank for a $US100,000,000 10 year US Dollar Sterling swap between Mobil Oil Corporation and General Electric Corporation Ltd (UK). The concept of the interest rate swap was developed by the Citicorp International Swap unit but cross-currency interest rate swaps were introduced by the World Bank in 1981 to obtain Swiss francs and German marks by exchanging cash flows with IBM. This deal was