FOREX-Euro gives back gains after ECB's interest rate decision

By Alun John

LONDON, March 16 (Reuters) - The euro gave back earlier small gains on Thursday after the European Central Bank stuck to its plan for a half-percentage-point interest rate increase despite recent market volatility, but said the future rate path would depend on incoming data.

The ECB has been raising rates at its fastest pace on record to curb high inflation, but a rout in global markets since the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank in the United States last week had threatened to upend those plans at the last moment.

The euro fell as much as 0.25% after the ECB's decision, having traded around 0.2% higher before the decision. It was last flat on the day at $1.05775

Antoine Bouvet, senior rates strategist at ING, said the promised 50-basis-point rate hike "sends a strong message on inflation, but the statement is peppered with reference to market tensions. This means the ECB will be data-dependent."

Currency markets, like markets more broadly, were calmer on Thursday after Credit Suisse said it would borrow up to $54 billion from the Swiss National Bank to shore up liquidity and investor confidence.

The bank's shares plunged as much as 30% on Wednesday.

That stability also helped the Swiss franc to strengthen, and the dollar at one point fell more than 1% against the franc , to 0.9232, reversing some of its 2.15% surge on Wednesday - the largest daily gain since 2015.

"We already saw a recovery since the SNB stepped in to offer its reassurances. I presume that we'll continue to hear more reassurances about the safety of the banking system and I would expect that would come through with the ECB," said Joel Kruger, market strategist at LMAX Group.

Elsewhere, the safe-haven Japanese yen remained in favour even as markets calmed a little.

The dollar was last down 1.17% against the yen at 131.92, around a 4% slide from the nearly three-month high that the U.S. currency hit on March 8 before markets entered their tailspin.

Sterling was steady at $1.2046, and the dollar index, which tracks the unit against six main peers, was down 0.1% at 104.5.

(Reporting by Alun John in London, additional reporting by Joice Alves and Harry Robertson in London and Rae Wee in Singapore; Editing by Kim Coghill, Emelia Sithole-Matarise, Hugh Lawson and Paul Simao)