Sterling rebounds

Sterling rebounded towards this week's 12-year high against the dollar on Friday after weaker than expected US jobs data pushed the greenback down across the board. Data showing British house prices fell for a second straight month in November did little to dent sterling as market attention was dominated by movements in euro/dollar.
"In the big picture, sterling is trading on the back of euro/dollar. Moves are largely dollar-oriented, although we had weak UK house price data," said Neil Mellor, currency strategist at Bank of New York.
By 1535 GMT sterling was up half a percent on the day at $1.9335.
On Thursday, sterling hit $1.9438, its highest since early September 1992, a few days before the pound was ejected from Europe's exchange rate mechanism - a forerunner to the single currency.
Sterling's trade-weighted index, which has a euro weighting of 64.82 percent, a dollar weighting of 16.49 percent and a yen one of 7.0 percent, eased from the previous day's two-month high.
Sterling was slightly weaker against the euro on the day, trading at 69.08 pence per euro at 1538 GMT. Sterling hit 1-1/2 month highs against the euro on Thursday.
Halifax bank said British house prices fell for a second straight month in November by 0.4 percent, bringing annual house price inflation to its weakest since January.
It also predicted property prices would fall two percent in 2005 after nine years of gains.
Separate data showed Britain's services sector grew in November at its strongest pace in three months, driven by brisk new business and new hiring. The Chartered Institute of Purchasing and Supply/Reuters index of service sector business rose to a better than expected 56.7 last month from 56.3.
British Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown said in an interview with Reuters he remained optimistic about the prospects for the British economy.
The Bank of England holds its monthly policy meeting next week, but all 45 economists polled by Reuters this week expected rates to stay on hold at 4.75 percent.