U.K. PROFITTED FROM AUTUMN INTERVENTION - LAWSON

  Britain has reaped profits by using a
  stronger pound to buy back dollars used by the government last
  autumn to support sterling during a currency crisis, Chancellor
  of the Exchequer Nigel Lawson said.
      He said in a parliamentary debate, "I can now tell the House
  (of Commons) that the dollars that were sold from the reserves
  in September and October (1986) have subsequently all been
  repurchased - at a profit of some tens of millions of pounds."
      Hindsight had proved him right to resist market pressures
  then for a two percentage point interest rate rise, he said.
  The increase in base rates was instead limited then to one
  point.
      During a debate on the 1987/88 British budget which Lawson
  unveiled last week, he said that "during the period of foreign
  exchange market turbulence which followed the somewhat
  inconclusive Group of Five and Group of Seven meetings at the
  end of September, I authorised the Bank of England to intervene
  unusually heavily in order to buy breathing space that would
  enable me to confine the interest rate rise to one pct rather
  than the two pct the market was then pressing for."
      He said that that one percentage point increase, effected
  in October 1986, had been reversed by this month's two half
  point cuts in banks' base lending rates. They are now at 10
  pct.
      Treasury figures show that the underlying change in British
  reserves - seen as a guide to possible Bank of England
  intervention on foreign exchange markets - suggest that the
  authorities sold around 1.0 billion dlrs during September and
  October 1986, government sources said.
  

