Articles and Whitepapers

As the clock ticks down towards the Article 50 deadline of March 29th, longer-term U.K. interest rates find themselves pretty much back where they were before the Bank of England decided to lift base rates from 0.25% in November 2017. The entire 5-year curve premium barely reflects a single interest rate increase, but for reasons that extend well beyond Brexit uncertainty.

The £ 3mth LIBOR fix has been moving higher without any notion of change to BOE rate. As rates have been moving up generally, and there is always additional premium across the year-end turn, it is easy to overlook that higher credit risk is now appearing in the £ LIBOR fix

Petrol & Oil currently make up 35 parts per 1000 within the RPI according to the ONS, or 3.5% of the Index. The weighting within the CPI index is lower, nearer 22 parts per 1000 or 2.2% of the index

The Bank of England has raised interest rates above 0.5% for the first time since March 2009, although this is still the first-time rates have been set at 0.75%, base rates were cut from 1% to 0.5% as part of the ongoing emergency response to the financial crisis

The Bank of England left interest rates unchanged at its May meeting. Markets had largely written off any probability of an increase following the BOE Governor’s BBC interview in late April where he alluded to weaker Q1 growth and Brexit uncertainty delaying the prospect of higher interest rates