The Bank of England has gone to extraordinary lengths to retain its staff despite a pay freeze being imposed across the venerable institution. As investment banking firms such as Goldman Sachs can offer multimillion pound packages to the UK’s top talent – the Bank Governor Mervyn King has pledged to curb canteen food prices.

Even before the financial crisis, central banks and regulators have struggled to keep their best staff in the face of competition from the private City institutions whose activities the regulators were keeping an eye on. But with pay for investment bankers on the rise once again and banks anxious to prepare themselves for a series of new regulations, headhunters are again looking up the contact details of the Bank's best and brightest.