Bank of England on brink of rate hike pause after inflation surprise
By William Schomberg
LONDON (Reuters) — The Bank of England will announce on Thursday whether it is halting a run of interest rate hikes that stretches back to December 2021, a day after signs that it had turned a corner in tackling Britain's high inflation problem.
Investors piled into bets on the BoE keeping Bank Rate at 5.25% on Wednesday as soon as official data showed a surprise fall in the pace of price growth.
Goldman Sachs and other banks ditched their previous calls for one more rate increase and investors put a roughly 50% chance on a pause by the BoE, up from just 20% on Tuesday.
Other analysts said they still thought a final BoE rate hike was the most likely outcome after a recent jump in global oil prices, but they stressed it could go either way.
«We stick with our call for a hike, but now see this as a coin toss,» JP Morgan economist Allan Monks said.
BoE Governor Andrew Bailey and his colleagues on the Monetary Policy Committee have faced intense criticism after consumer price inflation surpassed 11% in October last year.
At 6.7% in August, inflation is falling towards the 5% level that the BoE predicts for the coming months — and which British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has promised to voters ahead of an election expected next year.
But it remains more than three times the BoE's 2% target and the highest in the Group of Seven economies.
HIGHER FOR LONGER
Bailey and other officials have stressed in recent weeks that, while they might be close to reaching the peak of their run of rate hikes, they would probably have to keep borrowing costs at high levels for a period, dashing hopes of quick cuts.
Whether it raises rates one more time or not, the challenge for the BoE is likely to be to convince investors
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