Jon Cunliffe: Are firms underinvesting - and if so why?

Speech by Sir Jon Cunliffe, Deputy Governor for Financial Stability of the Bank of England, to the Greater Birmingham Chamber of Commerce, Birmingham, 8 February 2017.

The views expressed in this speech are those of the speaker and not the view of the BIS.

Central bank speech  | 
10 February 2017

I am very pleased to be speaking today in Birmingham. 

The Bank of England's association with Birmingham took a long time to happen.  True, we opened our branch here nearly 200 years ago, in 1827.  But that was 133 years after the Bank was founded in 1694. 

It was not that it took us a long time to get around to Birmingham.  Indeed, this was only our fourth branch, established less than a year after the Bank adopted a policy of having branches.  Nor was it just because we like to think hard and carefully before we act - though that is certainly true.