Farewell 'Steady Eddie' – former Bank governor dies, age 70

In George’s fifth year as governor, days after Labour came to power in 1997, Chancellor Gordon Brown removed the banking regulator role from the Bank but granted it independence from the government in setting interest rates, acting as a bone-fide central bank. Though proud of obtaining that independence, Lord George did not approve of Brown’s decision to hand the Bank’s regulatory powers to the Securities and Investments Board (SIB) ­ re-named as the Financial Services Authority ­ and briefly considered resigning.

The move did not lessen his impact on the economy. By the time he resigned from governorship in 2003, Lord George had presided over 40 consecutive quarters of GDP growth, earning the nickname “Steady Eddie”. He was deputy governor when the government pulled sterling from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism in 1992 ­ he had disapproved of joining in the first place ­ while the spectacular collapse of Barings Bank in 1995 came two years into his governorship.

Aside from a brief spell in the Royal Air Force, Lord George spent his entire professional career with the Bank, joining from university in 1962, rising to deputy governor in 1990 and becoming governor three years later.

He undertook three secondments, studying central planning at Moscow State University, joining the Bank for International Settlements for four years in 1966, and in 1972, and acting as secretary to the International Monetary Fund’s chairman for the Committee of Twenty for two years.

He retired in 2003 and was made a life peer in 2004 as Lord George of St Tudy, the Cornish village where he retired.

Read Shareholder Values: The life and times of Eddie George