The Bank of England hack is a Hollywood comedy waiting to happen – but not everyone is laughing

A feed of Mark Carney’s words makes all the difference to high-frequency traders, writes James Moore

Mark Carney: The words of the governor of the Bank of England can move markets (Reuters)

The Bank of England hack is destined to become a Hollywood movie somewhere down the line. If filmmakers can make a successful comedy drama out of what bankers and hedge funds got up to with collateralised debt obligations and sub-prime mortgages prior to the financial crisis, then this one ought to be easy.

What happened is that an unnamed “third-party supplier” was given access to the audio feed of the Bank of England’s press conferences. It was put in place as a back-up in case the main video feed, supplied by Bloomberg TV, were to go down.

Here’s the thing: the audio feed is faster than the video one. Quite a bit faster.