Are firms underinvesting – and if so why? Speech given by Sir Jon Cunliffe, Deputy Governor Financial Stability, Member of the Monetary Policy Committee, Member of the Financial Policy Committee and Member of the Prudential Regulatory Authority Board  Greater Birmingham Chamber of Commerce Wednesday 8 February 2017  1  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/speeches  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. Rather it was because for the first 125 years of its life, the Bank preferred to see itself as essentially a London institution. In 1825, however, the shortage of liquidity in the whole of the British economy led to a great credit squeeze, bankruptcies and bank failures. The Bank was given the choice of expanding its operations into the country as a whole or losing its monopoly. As a result the Bank quickly established branches throughout the country.
Indrajit Coomaraswamy: Inaugural speech Inaugural speech by Dr Indrajit Coomaraswamy, Governor of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka, Colombo, 4 July 2016. *  *  *  Deputy Governors, Mrs. Ramanathan, Senior Management, colleagues, it is a great privilege and honour to be here with you as the Governor of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka. The Central Bank of Sri Lanka is one of the great institutions in this country and I am acutely aware that a primary responsibility, arguably the primary responsibility of the Governor is to uphold its reputation and credibility. And I can assure you that I will do my utmost to do so at all times. Of course, I can’t do this on my own. I need the cooperation of each and every one of you to maintain this as one of the great institutions in the country. You know my parents went abroad when I was about eleven years old so I had much of my secondary and university education abroad. But as I was doing my degree and thinking of what I should do in the future – of course I had been abroad for many years, but I did come back every year for my summer holidays so I kept in touch with Sri Lanka – and there was no doubt in my mind as to what my career should be and that was to be as a staff member of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka. The Central Bank had such an awesome reputation.