Is the Bank of England the most profitable company in the world?

M&G's bond expert Matthew Russell on the returns Mervyn King and co have generated since the start of QE.

Is the Bank of England the most profitable company in the world? Well the answer is probably no. Exxon Mobil, for example, made $19bn last year, and its profits were over $40 bn in 2007. We can also debate whether the Bank of England is a company anyway (it says so on the bank notes, but it was nationalised in 1946). However, with gilt yields continuing their march downward we thought it would be interesting to put an estimate on the returns the Bank of England has generated in the 2 1/2 years following the start of Quantitative Easing (QE). In my back of an envelope analysis I ...