The pound is charging after Andrea Leadsom dropped out of the Conservative leadership race

The British pound is jumping after Conservative party leadership candidate Andrea Leadsom pulled out of the race to be the UK’s prime minister, leaving favourite Theresa May with a clear path to becoming the country’s next leader.

At around 11:35 a.m. BST (6:35 a.m. ET) rumours began to circulate on Twitter that Leadsom was preparing to stand down. At the time, the pound was trading at around $1.287, down by around 0.7% on the day. However, when rumours began, the pound immediately shot-up, hitting $1.2984 against the dollar.

Leadsom made an official statement announcing that she is pulling out of the race at around 12:15 p.m. (7:15 a.m. ET) and since then, the pound has held steady just above the neutral mark for the day, and off a little from the high seen shortly after rumours began to swirl.

Here’s the chart showing the pound’s reaction:

You can see Business Insider’s full coverage of Leadsom standing down from the election here.

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