Wealth & Money Management Awards 2018

4 Developed World Policymakers Place Their Bets In a busy period for monetary policy news, three of the world’s major central banks held their formal committee meetings this week. What did this mean for investment markets? Graham Bishop, Investment Director at Heartwood Investment Management, the asset management arm of Handelsbanken in the UK, talks us through it. Bank of England: A surprise reaction to unsurprising news Last week’s announcement that the Bank of England (BoE) would raise its base interest rate from 0.5 to 0.75% came as little surprise to investment markets, which had almost fully priced in the move. The Bank’s committee members voted unanimously for the UK’s second rate rise since the financial crisis. The committee also agreed to maintain its current levels of corporate and government bond issuances at (£10bn and £435bn respectively), contrary to some earlier media speculation over the potential for quantitative tightening. Source: Bank of England’s Inflation Report , August 2018