Exclusive and Off The Record

A Private Lunch with Meryn King, Governor of the Bank of England

Held on Thursday 26th March 2009 at the Midland Hotel

In a rare visit to Manchester and exclusively for pro manchester members, Mervyn King, Governor of the Bank of England spoke candidly and off the record to 150 of the Citiy's most senior financial professionals.

One of the Bank of England's two core purposes is monetary stability. Monetary stability means stable prices - low inflation - and confidence in the currency. Stable prices are defined by the Government's inflation target of 2% set by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, which the Bank seeks to meet through the decisions on interest rates taken by the Monetary Policy Committee. The MPC sets the Bank Rate for the whole of the United Kingdom.

But the Bank is only too aware that the economic picture varies by sector and region. The job of the MPC is to aggregate a wide range of information to form a judgement about the best course of action for the UK as a whole to achieve the inflation target. The role of monetary policy is to achieve price stability by balancing aggregate demand and potential supply in the UK economy.