For much of his 31-year career at the Bank of England, Bill Allen worked on market operations. That gave him a front-row seat for Black Wednesday in September 1992, when the central bank was unable to defend sterling’s fixed rate against the mark in the face of concerted selling by speculators led by hedge fund Quantum. Recalls Allen, who was manning the bank’s foreign exchange desk that day, “It was a kind of character-building experience I wouldn’t want to go through again.”
He is not likely to have to. Last month the 55-year-old Allen joined, of all things, a hedge fund -- macro fund Brevan Howard -- as an adviser. The bank’s former European director, Allen isn’t the only senior BofE official to join a hedge fund of late: Last year Sushil Wadhwani, 44, who had been head of research at Tudor Proprietary Trading before joining the bank’s Monetary Policy Committee in 1999, completed his two-year term before leaving to start his own macro fund. Allen’s departure, however, is different. Rarely does the bank, which provides prestige as well as a generous pension, lose a high-ranking official of such long standing. Put it down to the allure of the Mayfair hedge fund set.
“I was attracted by the challenge,” says Allen, who joined the BofE in 1972. “I’d never worked in the private sector before, where you’re exposed to objective measurements of performance on a daily basis.”
