The Bank of England could be split this week, when policymakers meet to set interest rates.
James Lynch, Fixed Income investment manager at Aegon Asset Management, predicts that most members of the Bank’s Monetary Policy Committee will vote to tighten again.
Lynch says: “On the voting, we could be back to three-way splits on the committee again, with two voting for unchanged, one or two voting for a 50bps hike, and the remainder in the middle voting for 25bps.
On the finer details of the forward guidance, we have the minutes of the meeting to go on, but this is not a policy review meeting where we get updated fan charts, and there won’t be a press conference – so it’s not the most useful meeting in the event of a big change in guidance.
MPC members Silvana Tenreyro and Swati Dhingra are seen as most likely to vote for no change, having opposed recent increases at past meetings.
