The yen slumped the most in three years against the dollar as Japan stepped in to foreign-exchange markets to weaken the currency for the third time this year after its gain to a postwar record threatened exporters.
The dollar rose against all its major peers after MF Global Holdings Ltd. was suspended from conducting new business with the New York Federal Reserve, driving stocks down and boosting refuge demand. The yen fell against all of its 16 most-traded counterparts tracked by Bloomberg after Japan’s Finance Minister Jun Azumi ordered the intervention.
“Once the yen started printing new highs, the chance of intervention was there,” said Vassili Serebriakov, a currency strategist at Wells Fargo & Co. in New York. “There’s some broader dollar support from this Japanese intervention.”
