By: Barbara Zigah

Both the common currency and the U.S. Dollar have struck new record troughs against the Swiss Franc in Asian trading today, as investor concerns over sovereign debt fears on both sides of the Atlantic are weighing. The Euro briefly slipped below 1.400 Swiss Francs earlier as investors look forward to another E.U. summit later this week, likely to tackle Greece’s second bailout. As reported at 2:53 p.m. (JST) in Tokyo, the Euro slipped to 1.1365 Swiss Francs, down from Friday’s 1.1501 Swiss Francs trade in New York. The U.S. Dollar traded against the Swiss Franc at 0.8034 Swiss Francs on the EBS trading platform, off from the 0.8129 Swiss Francs traded on Friday.

Surprisingly, the results of the Friday bank stress tests had little effect on the Euro; the initial report which showed only 8 banks failing has been more thoroughly digested over the weekend, with critics and analysts now claiming, much like the previous ones, that the stress tests were not rigorous enough. One analyst pointed out that the benefit of the stress tests is that the data release was comprehensive enough that many of the banks tested can use the data to run their own tests.