ECB keeps policy unchanged, strategy review details to follow

The European Central Bank kept all its main policy settings unchanged on Thursday and announced the launch of its long-awaited strategy review.

As some analysts had been hoping for, it also said that further details regarding the review, including its scope and a timetable for the same would be published at 1430 GMT.

The above aside, the policy announcment was unchanged from the last time around, on 24 October.

Interest rates on the main refinancing operations, the marginal lending facility and its deposit facility were kept at 0.00%, 0.25% and -0.50%, respectively.

Policymakers also reiterated that rates would remain at their present level or lower until the "inflation outlook robustly converge[s] to a level sufficiently close to, but below, 2% within its projection horizon, and such convergence has been consistently reflected in underlying inflation dynamics."

So too, the Governing Council again said that asset purchases would run at €20.0bn a month for "as long as necessary" and that it would reinvest the principal from the maturing securities from its asset purchase programme "as long as necessary to maintain favourable liquidity conditions and an ample degree of monetary accommodation".

Financial markets' focus will now shift to ECB chief Christine Lagarde's press conference at 1330 GMT.