New governor has immediate impact on BoE

Mark Carney’s arrival as the governor of the Bank of England appears to have had an immediate impact on the bank’s monetary policy committee.

This was clearly evident in his very first monetary policy committee meeting, where the unusual step was taken to issue a statement, even though there had been no change to monetary policy.

The statement was issued against a backdrop of recent rises in UK market rates. This reflected a general move higher in international rates, on the back of comments from the US Federal Reserve in June that it was considering tapering the rate of purchases of its bond-buying programme before the end of 2013.