King's midas touch: Bank of England announces profits near £1bn

The Bank of England said in May that it had made just shy of £1bn from helping rescue failed banks and building societies. In the year to late February 2009, pre-tax profit ballooned to £995m from a measly £197m the previous year, purely from having fulfilled its core purposes ­ “ensuring monetary and financial stability”.

It transferred £417m of that to its cash reserves, significantly up on 2007-08 when it put £80m away. Governor Mervyn King said that among the Bank’s priorities in the coming year is returning inflation to 2% and strengthening co-operation and communication between central banks. But he warned: “Banking crises can never be prevented; they are as old as banks themselves. But we can reduce the likelihood of them occurring and ensure that when they do, they are orderly and contained.”