Bank of England

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The Bank of England is the central bank of the whole of the UK; it has no subsidiary member banks. It is a public sector institution wholly-owned by the govt; the bank's entire capital is held by the Treasury Solicitor on behalf of HM Treasury.[1][2]

Subsidiaries: AR-2018, p.99, p.59

Governance: funding, AR-2018

Bank of England Database ? See https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/legal

Prudential Regulation Authority

Governance, Reports, Supervises We are prudential regulators. We create policies for firms to follow as well as watch over aspects of the business – we call this supervision. We want to ensure that the financial services and products that we all rely on can be provided in a safe and sound way.
We were established as part of a new wave of regulation in financial services after the financial crisis of 2007. We now supervise over around 1,500 financial institutions including banks and insurance companies.[3]

Centre for Central Banking Studies

Financial Policy Committee

The Financial Policy Committee was established in 2013 as part of the new system of regulation brought in to improve financial stability after the financial crisis. It identifies, monitors and takes action to remove or reduce systemic risks with a view to protecting and enhancing the resilience of the UK financial system. The FPC also has a secondary objective to support the economic policy of the Government.

The FPC has two sets of powers – powers of direction and power of recommendation. The FPC has the power to direct regulators to take action on a number of specific policy tools. In addition, the FPC can make recommendations to anyone to reduce risks to financial stability.ref

ToDo:

Timeline

Articles

  • Dec.14.2018: Bank of England to cut staff expenses after £390,000 travel bill row. Allowances made public for first time and policy will come into force in March 2019. The Bank of England is cutting meal and hotel allowances for staff after coming under fire over a £390,000 travel bill racked up by two of its economics advisers. Kalyeena Makortoff, The Guardian.
  • Nov.10.2018: Here’s a warning for the Bank: toughen up and pull the trigger. One of the many regulatory shortcomings that the crisis exposed was the lack of tools that supervisors had to manage the financial system. So the Bank was given a vast array of powers to rein in lending where it saw fit, which it passed to the new Financial Policy Committee. It had all started so auspiciously. The FPC was formally established in 2013 and the following year took steps to stop the housing market from overheating by setting loan-to-income limits. Yet even at this early stage, the policy hinted at the FPC’s timidity. The LTI limit was designed as a restraint against rampant house price inflation rather than an attempt to cool the market. In 2014, 25% of mortgages were on more than four times a borrower’s income. Today the figure is 30%. In aggregate, lending has got riskier. Warnings work today where they did not in 2006 because they can be followed up. But until the Bank pulls the trigger, a suspicion will remain that its powers are just for show. Behind the Bank’s timidity is a fear of picking winners and the political wrangling that would follow. Strict mortgage limits would provoke an outcry from those who found themselves locked out of the housing market by technocrats on Threadneedle Street. Part of the problem is the FPC’s garbled remit, which runs to eight pages and instructs the Bank simultaneously to “enhance the resilience of the financial system”, “support the economic policy of the government”, promote competition, encourage long-term investment and justify any action it takes that might slow growth. Everything about that is political and none of it is clear. Philip Adlrick, The Times.
  • Jun.27.2018: Mark Carney defends 'staggering' Bank of England expenses bill. Governor says context is important and his own two-year bill exceeded £300,000. Carney, who said he had spent the weekend at a meeting in Basel, Switzerland, confirmed his own travel expenses totalled £312,000 over the past two years, but said this covered 52 trips and was reduced to £136,000 by reimbursements from international organisations he chairs. Phillip Inman, The Guardian.
  • Apr.20.2018: QE only made rich richer, Billy Bragg tells Bank. The Bank of England's chief economist, Andrew Haldane, wants to broaden the range of people the Bank hears from. He invited Billy Bragg. Bragg said that British citizens felt they had lost any sense of control or accountability over the economy and financial markets. He called for worker participation on company boards to be mandatory and for short-term speculation and “the gaming of the market by higher frequency traders” to be actively discouraged. He said that the Bank of England’s policy of quantitative easing had “benefited those who already have the most”, adding that “wealth has been redistributed but it has been redistributed upwards”. QE is a way of pumping money directly into the economy to keep the banking system flowing at times of crisis. The Bank of England “prints” more money and uses it to buy bonds from investors such as banks or pension funds. This form of stimulus was used widely by central bankers after the 2008 financial crash along with ultra-low interest rates to prevent a repeat of the Great Depression, with the Bank of England pumping £435 billion into the economy. However, data released by the Bank of England last month revealed that QE has led to the wealthiest 10 per cent of households being £350,000 richer than they otherwise would have been. Tom Knowles, The Times.
  • Feb.25.2018: {{{title}}} Signs of accelerating wage growth have convinced a deputy governor of the Bank of England that swifter rises in interest rates are needed. The change of heart for Sir Dave Ramsden, until now one of the doves on the Bank’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC), will add to a growing conviction in the City that a further increase to 0.75% is coming in May. Tomm Stubbington, David Smith, The Times.
  • Feb.07.2018: UK renews terms of Bank of England FPC members Kohn and Taylor. Bank of England Financial Policy Committee member Donald Kohn will serve a second three-year term, while fellow FPC member Martin Taylor will serve for another 12-15 months, Britain's finance ministry said on Wednesday. Investing.com, Reuters.
  • Jan.23.2018: Men Only: Inside the charity fundraiser where hostesses are put on show. A furore has erupted over a men-only fundraising dinner in London for the Presidents Club charity after an FT investigation revealed hostesses at the event were groped, sexually harassed and propositioned. The Bank of England has withdrawn a tour of its historic headquarters in central London, which was auctioned during the fundraising dinner. A spokesperson said the organisation had not approved the prize, which had reportedly been re-auctioned from another charity event. Madison Marriage, Financial Times.
  • Jul.17.2016: Governor Carney shuts down the Bank of England! 300-year-old tradition of private accounts for staff is axed. Mr Carney has ended more than 300 years of tradition by closing the Bank’s internal branch for staff because it cannot compete in the modern era of online banking and contactless payments. Until recently, current and former staff could open accounts and receive specially issued Bank of England cheque books and debit cards marked with the figure of Britannia. The sort code of 10-00-00 indicated its status as Britain’s most important branch, with cheques grandly addressed 'to the cashiers of the Bank of England London'. A Bank of England spokesman said: "After a full consultation process, the Bank confirmed to customers in November 2015 that it would close its personal banking service. This followed the Bank’s withdrawal from providing retail banking services to Government departments and other corporate customers. Many customers have now moved to other banks, and we expect the exercise to be completed during 2017." Ned Donovan, The Mail Online.
  • Mar.05.2015: Britain's fraud squad probes Bank of England. The Serious Fraud Office is examining auctions conducted by the central bank in 2007 + 2008. They were designed to help keep money flowing through the banking system at the start of the financial crisis. The BoE commissioned an independent inquiry into the money market auctions last year. Once that inquiry was completed, it referred the matter to the SFO in Nov.2014. The latest probe follows an investigation by the SFO into potential rigging by traders of the $5.3 trillion-a-day foreign exchange market. An official at the Bank of England was initially embroiled in that probe, but an independent inquiry later cleared him of any wrongdoing. Six banks have already paid $4.33 billion to settle claims they rigged currency markets. Governor Mark Carney told U.K. lawmakers Tuesday that it had identified 50 cases of potential market abuse. Of those, he said 42 cases had been referred to the Financial Conduct Authority. Virgina Harrison, CNN Money.
  • Nov.13.2014: Six banks fined more than $4 billion in currency probe. A separate investigation into the actions of officials at the Bank of England found that no staffers were involved with alleged foreign exchange rigging. However, one official was found to have been aware of potential improper conduct, and failed to raise the issue. Sophia Yan, CNN Money.
  • Mar.05.2014: Bank of England suspends employee in forex probe. An employee has been suspended in connection with a probe into possible manipulation of the global currency market. The BoE announced the suspension Wednesday, but did not specify the employee's position or responsibilities. It suggested the employee may not have followed its "rigorous internal control processes." Gregory Wallace, Virginia Harrison, CNN Money.