Christine Lagarde says more than a ‘couple of quarters’ until ECB cuts rates

It will take more than “the next couple of quarters” for the European Central Bank to start cutting interest rates, its president Christine Lagarde has said.

Lagarde told the Financial Times Global Boardroom conference on Friday that if interest rates were kept at their current levels for “long enough” it would bring eurozone inflation down to its 2 per cent target.

But she added: “It is not something that [means] in the next couple of quarters we will be seeing a change. Long enough has to be long enough.”

The ECB last month left its benchmark deposit unchanged at an all-time high of 4 per cent in an attempt to tame inflation.

[FT]