LONDON, Dec 11 - Sterling eased from the previous day's 11-year peaks against the dollar on Wednesday as the greenback recovered its footing after a broad-based drubbing in the past two weeks. While UK financial pages were full of detail from Wednesday's pre-budget report from Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown, sterling continued to take its cues from moves in the euro/dollar rate. In a report to parliament ahead of the main budget in April, Brown raised public debt forecasts but gave upbeat growth forecasts.
"The pre-budget report didn't have much market impact and sterling is continuing to reflect general dollar sentiment," said Ryan Shea, senior international economist at Bank One. "The dollar has fallen a long way in a short space of time, so we could see a pullback." Sterling was down half a percent at $1.7382 in early European trade, having risen to $1.7477 on Tuesday, its best showing since October 1992. The British currency traded above $2.00 in September 1992 but lost a quarter of its value in five months that followed sterling's ejection from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism on September 16 of that year. Sterling outperformed the euro, rising almost half a percent to 69.84 pence . The view that the United States needs a weaker currency to alleviate its growing current account deficit has weighed heavily on the dollar in recent weeks, knocking its to a record low against the euro on Tuesday for an eighth consecutive session. The Confederation of British Industry will release its industrial trends survey for December at 1100 GMT, followed by U.S. retail sales and weekly jobless claims at 1330 GMT.//