Sir Mervyn King to Mark Carney: You’re Worth It!

Sir Mervyn King held an emotional farewell with the Treasury Select Committee this morning ahead of his move from the Bank of England to the House of Lords. Committee chair Andrew Tyrie was as keen to recruit him as a supporter of banking reforms going through Parliament in the future as he was to grill the outgoing Governor: in fact, all the of the MPs on this often incisive committee were reasonably gentle with the man known as Merv the Swerv. As part of his farewell, he gave some advice to his successor which sounded a little bit like a L’Oréal advert:

‘Well, I have no intention of giving public advice, but if you really insist, really insist… it’s very simple: he should be himself. Governors change, it’s very important that each governor is true to themselves and that means acting and behaving in a different way than their predecessors. Everyone is different, and trying to fit into a mould doesn’t work.