Euroyen rate futures down on Moody's review.

TOKYO, Feb. 17 Kyodo

Euroyen interest rate futures tumbled in Tokyo on Thursday morning on news that Moody's Investors Service is considering downgrading its rating on Japanese government bonds. Prices on the Euroyen rate futures market came down in line with the decline in Japanese government bond prices. The key three-month September Euroyen rate futures contract  temporarily yielded 0.300% on the Tokyo International Financial Futures Exchange, up 0.020 percentage point from the previous day. Later, however, some buybacks were seen. "We had already been expecting a downgrade and the Moody's report did not cause that much turmoil," a dealer at a Japanese commercial bank said. The key unsecured overnight call money rate was unchanged at 0.02% on the Tokyo money market Thursday morning from Wednesday's weighted average. The Bank of Japan (BOJ) drained 300 billion yen from the market by selling bills under repurchase agreements to keep the fund surplus

at 1 trillion yen.