Fresh from his attack on bank-lending practices, the governor of the Bank of England delivered Wednesday a warning to banks he doesn't think are moving quickly enough to reduce their dependence on central-bank funding. Who could he have been thinking of? One name springs to mind: Lloyds Banking Group.

In what appeared to be a prepared response to a largely unrelated question, King made clear there was no question of the BOE renewing its liquidity program, a facility designed to enable UK banks to raise funds against their domestic-mortgage books, when it expires in 18 months. The governor said all the banks had plans to replace this funding, and no bank had asked the BOE to renew it. But he made clear some banks were worrying too much about the cost of market funding rather than making it a priority to reduce their financing risks by extending the maturity of their funding.