Since June 1964, when the last article on this subject appeared in the Bulletin, the foreign currency liabilities and claims of banks in the United Kingdom have grown at an impressive rate. This growth has been described in the quarterly Commentaries in subsequent issues of the Bulletin, and has also been touched upon in two recent articles on the U.K. banking sector. The present article reviews developments over the past six years as a whole. It brings the earlier material together, and includes some new information about U.K. residents' holdings of non-sterling currencies, and about the maturity pattern of the banks' liabilities and claims in these currencies. The available statistics are summarised in four tables at the end of the article, and the sources of the figures are described in an appendix.
The euro-currency business of bank in London