Government pushes Bank of England to innovate on payments and digital currencies Regulation The Bank of England will be tracked on its progress on UK payments regulation after it was handed a new objective by ministers. The central bank will be given a new secondary objective to support innovation in payment systems and new forms of digital currencies alongside its main goals of financial stability. The Treasury is [...]
El Nino heatwaves to ‘fuel inflation next year’ Economics The ‘Super El Nino’ triggering record temperatures across Europe could add a full percentage point to inflation next year, hampering central bank efforts to slow down price rises, a top investment bank has warned. According to an analysis by Jefferies, harsh weather unleashed by the meteorological phenomenon will pose “an inflationary threat” next year and [...]
House prices slump as Iran war and interest rates hit demand Property House prices slumped in July after the Iran war and higher interest rates squeezed demand and triggered a slowdown in sales. Annual house price growth slowed to 1.8 last month, down from 2.2 per cent the prior month. Month on month, average house prices remained broadly flat, rising by just £58 to reach £277,542, up [...]
Why the Bank of England museum is a one-of-a-kind July 28, 2026 Where else in the country can you walk into a museum and without any guard present, lift a gold bar worth £1.2 million? Welcome to the Bank of England museum, one of the City’s hidden gems. Apart from the gold bar, a reminder of the 400,000 beneath you, the museum is a real treasure house, [...]
Four charts revealing scale of Andy Burnham’s economic challenge July 21, 2026 Andy Burnham has harboured ambitions to be Prime Minister for over a decade. But the economy he is inheriting will take the shine off his lofty hopes – just look at these four charts. As he stepped out onto Downing Street for the first time as Prime Minster, Andy Burnham allowed himself to break out [...]
IMF warns Bank of England against cutting interest rates July 17, 2026 The Bank of England must keep interest rates on hold for as long as risks from the Iran war persist, the International Monetary Fund has said. In its annual temperature check of Britain’s economic outlook, the fund warned rate setters to keep monetary policy “sufficiently restrictive” to avoid sparking a painful bout of inflation that [...]
Bank of England waters down stablecoin rules after industry backlash June 22, 2026 The Bank of England has diluted its incoming stablecoin rules after warnings from currency providers that the UK risked falling behind rival jurisdictions in a rapidly growing pocket of the global financial system. In its final framework for regulating the fledgling currencies, which are a digital form of money whose value is pegged to another [...]
The Bank of England is keeping Britain in the waiting room June 19, 2026 The MPC’s decision to holding the Bank rate for the fourth meeting is downstream of a government, and a country, that’s run out of ideas, says Emmanuel Igwe What sound does a country make when it has run out of ideas? Rather than cacophonous noise or a muted groan, I would say that sound is [...]
What will markets make of the new chair of the Fed? June 16, 2026 Kevin Warsh wants to take us back to a world where the semi-annual Humphrey-Hawkins testimony of the Fed Chair to Congress is effectively the moment where the Monetary Wizard of Oz steps out from behind the curtain to signal the direction for interest rates, says Helen Thomas “I don’t view the Chairman, in his testimony [...]
Bank of England’s Bailey defends bond sale programme June 15, 2026 Andrew Bailey has launched a robust defence of the Bank of England’s controversial bond sale programme, arguing it will provide the firepower for another round of quantitative easing in a market downturn. Writing in The Times, Bailey argued the central bank’s move to hoover up UK government bonds, known as gilts, in the wake of [...]