The dollar slid further on Thursday, particularly against the yen, with even a burst of what appeared to be intervention in the markets by Japanese authorities doing little to arrest the decline.

The single European currency stood at 1.1844 dollars against 1.1804 late on Wednesday in New York.

The dollar traded at 109.07 yen compared with 109.60 on Wednesday.

The yen even briefly headed into 108-to-the-dollar territory for the first time since November 2000, hitting 108.85 just after 0730 GMT.

However it then swiftly fell back to the 109 yen mark, leading traders in Tokyo to presume that the Bank of Japan (BoJ) had intervened to rein in the currency's surge.