A ‘group washing machine’ and ‘tangled skein’: the failure of Slater Walker

David Rule

In August 1977, the Bank of England purchased the bank Slater Walker Limited, completing its rescue. The bank had been a subsidiary of Slater Walker Securities, controlled by Jim Slater, which also owned an insurer. This post describes how Slater misused depositors’ and policyholders’ funds to finance his wider business interests. The Bank of England sought to protect depositors by supporting the wider group rather than putting the bank into liquidation. The case remains relevant today when banks and insurers continue to be owned by financial and industrial groups, including private equity sponsors, and supervisors must consider how to address conflicts of interest and how far to insulate the bank or insurer from the rest of the group.

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A balancing act in public ownership: the quiet legacy of the Bank of England Act 1946

Andrew Hewitt

Sunday 1 March 2026 was the 80th anniversary of the Bank’s coming into public ownership, following the Bank of England Act 1946. It was the first of eight major nationalisations by the post-war Labour government and the only one not to be later reversed, in whole or in part. Some opponents, at the time, were said to consider it a revolutionary ‘measure of first-class importance’; others considered it inconsequential. Although it was a defining point in UK financial history, it did not feature highly in the public consciousness. Yet it laid enduring foundations for the Bank’s operational and financial independence, carefully balancing powers to act in the public interest with limits on political interference.

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New money, old money

David Rule and Iain de Weymarn

Technologies such as distributed ledgers create the possibility of new forms of digital money, whether privately-issued ‘stable coins’, tokenised commercial bank deposits, or central bank digital currencies. Authorities are considering a world where digital money circulates alongside existing forms of money. In the past, the nature of money has often changed. Prior to the late-seventeenth century, English money comprised predominantly silver coin and in the subsequent two centuries mainly gold coin, before evolving to include paper banknotes and bank accounts linked to card, internet and app-based payment systems. But what can a previous period when money changed – 1695–97, when paper money first began to circulate alongside coin – tell us about the possible transition to digital money?

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