June 1, 2012, 11:09 AM

Bloomberg Tests Post-Euro Greek Drachma Code

By William Kemble-Diaz

It’s gone now but foreign exchange dealers for a time Friday were shocked to see a brand new currency appearing on their Bloomberg screens: a post-euro drachma.

The news set the trader grapevine and Twittersphere ablaze with speculation the financial news provider feared the worst ahead of Greece’s June 17 elections and was preparing for a Greek exit from the euro zone.

“Bloomberg carries out contingency planning exercises in the normal course of business. In accordance with this, Bloomberg has planned for a number of different scenarios across all our businesses including individual sovereign default scenarios and changes of currency for individual sovereigns,” Bloomberg L.P. said in a statement.

“As part of this testing process, a test identifier was briefly visible to a few customers,” it said.

By typing XGD on their screens–rather than the GRD legacy code of the erstwhile Greek drachma–Bloomberg users were briefly able to see, among the options listed, a spot exchange rate for a post-euro Greek drachma.

http://blogs.wsj.com/eurocrisis/2012/06/01/bloomberg-tests-post-euro-greek-drachma-code/