BoE increases QE to £875bn but avoids negative interest rates

A rise of £150bn brings the central bank's quantitative easing programme to a total of £875bn, while it also voted unanimously to maintain its corporate bond purchasing programme at £20bn. The increased monetary easing was justified by the bank as a method to "support the economy and help to ensure that the unavoidable near-term slowdown in activity was not amplified by a tightening in monetary conditions that could slow the return of inflation to the [2%] target". Following a 4 November Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) meeting, the BoE made the announcement at 7am rather than noon to ...