The Note Issue

The Bank of England is probably most familiar to the public as the name on the banknotes. The Bank is the sole issuer of currency notes in England and Wales, and although Scottish and Northern Irish banks issue their own notes, most of these must be backed, pound for pound, by Bank of England notes. (Coin is issued by the Royal Mint on behalf of the Treasury, and is not a responsibility of the Bank of England.) The net profits from thenote issue (which are considerable) are paid over to the government.

The notes are designed and produced at the Bank's own Printing Works and issued mainly through the commercial banks' branch networks. The Bank itself has only 5 branches (in Bristol, Birmingham, Leeds, Manchester and Newcastle) and these play a part both in distributing new notes and in taking in old notes for sorting and reissue or destruction. The average life of a Bank note ranges from a year for a J5 note to 3-4 years for a J50 note.

Banknotes are printed on special watermarked paper and much technical and design effort goes into making them difficult to counterfeit. The present series of banknotes was introduced between 199o and 1994.

The Bank's notes originally represented deposits of gold coin and bullion with the Bank and until 1931, when Britain finally came off the gold standard, could be exchanged for gold at a fixed rate - hence the words "I promise to pay" on the face of the notes. Since 1844 the Bank has been authorized to issue notes against securities - the fiduciary issue of notes - instead of just gold or silver. After 1939 only a nominal amount of gold was held and today the note issueis wholly backed by securities.

Дата добавления: 2015-07-20