for a world without libor either, leaving borrowers and lenders alike exposed to serious uncertainty and the risk of a disorderly outcome. where those contracts are expected to remain outstanding, the best chance of avoiding those risks lies in active conversion to another rate before the end of 2021. for sterling, the industry - led working group has strongly encouraged all market participants to complete, by the end of next march, a full assessment of their libor contracts extending beyond the end of 2021. the aim is to identify those that can be actively converted, and to put plans in place to complete those conversions wherever viable by the end of next september. this advice is echoed more broadly by the fsb in its global transition roadmap. 11 if you haven ’ t done so already, you should be making a start on that assessment. to stand a chance of controlling your destiny, you need to know what your exposures are, and how you ’ re going to deal with them over the course of next year. make and resource those plans now – we don ’ t want anyone to be caught out. and the regulators will be watching closely. conclusion retirements always seem far off, until they ’ re not. libor is no different. what once seemed a distant prospect is now very real. one by one the remaining areas of uncertainty are closing. now there ’ s just a year left for all market participants to get three key things done : - first, move all your new business off libor as soon as possible next year – and by the end of march for sterling ; - second, sign the isda protocol or make firm alternative plans ; and - third, work hard to convert any remaining legacy contracts away from libor. https : / / www. fsb. org / 2020 / 10 / global - transition - roadmap - for - libor / all speeches are available online at www. bankofengland. co. uk / news / speeches and @ boe _ pressoffice to have got to this point is a quite remarkable achievement by everyone involved. working together, it ’ s time for one last push before we bid libor farewell for good. thank you. all speeches are available online at www. bankofengland. co. uk / news / speeches and @ boe _ pressoffice

it ’ s a discussion we ’ ll have on the basis of the economic indicators. you know we are very pragmatic people, we look at the figures and then we ’ ll see how inflation is being passed on to what we call underlying inflation and also how inflation is being passed on to wages, i. e. we ’ ll see if wage negotiations are taking account of price increases. at the moment, that ’ s not really the case. in any case, it won ’ t be in 2017, there will be no increase in the ecb ’ s interest rate in 2017. it ’ s something we ’ ll examine in the light of the economic indicators, sorry to disappoint you. germany is becoming impatient. there ’ s talk of inflation which could exceed 2 % on an annual basis in germany this year. inflation which hurts german savers. wolfgang schauble, minister of finance, is calling on the ecb to act this year. what do you say to him? first, mr schauble has always been very respectful of the treaties and the independence of the central bank, so i am not too worried on that front. and in general, germans understand very well that the european central bank has an inflation mandate for the euro area. they understand that inflation in the euro area should return towards 2 % and i think they also understand that to have a strong economy in the euro area is in the interests of germany. and that ’ s what we are working on. doesn ’ t this difference, at least between germany and the rest of the euro area in respect of inflation, illustrate the inability of monetary policy to act when faced with a currency area which is still heterogeneous, the euro area? that ’ s quite true. that ’ s quite true. it ’ s a problem we had before the financial crisis, with a large divergence in labour costs in the euro area, which incidentally the central bank at the time, headed by jean - claude trichet, spoke out against ( without much of a result, but we did speak out ). as a central bank we can only work effectively if the economies of the euro area are sufficiently convergent. convergence is needed in the euro area for monetary policy to function well, but also if you want to pave the way for a further strengthening of the euro area, because the various member states have to trust each other, and for that their economies need to be comparable. this