£250,000-a-year accommodation allowance for new Bank of England Governor Mark Carney

Mark Carney is relocating form Canad (Reuters)

Fresh details of the lucrative financial package required to lure the Bank of England’s first foreign Governor across the Atlantic show that Mark Carney, a Canadian, has landed a housing allowance worth £1.25m over his five-year term.

The £250,000-a-year agreement – signed off by the Bank of England’s non-executive directors – underlined the desperation of Chancellor George Osborne to get his man, leaving the Bank of Canada Governor with a total package worth £874,000 a year.

The Treasury had already made him the highest-paid central banker in the world with a basic salary of £480,000, as well as a 30 per cent top-up in lieu of pension payments.

The former Goldman Sachs banker, who takes over at Threadneedle Street next July, will earn a basic salary more than three times as much as the Prime Minister. The largesse catapults him into the salary league of directors of the UK’s 250 biggest companies, although he still earns less than half as much as the estimated £2m a year picked up by England football manager Roy Hodgson. Sir Mervyn King, the current Governor, earns £305,000, which does not include previous, substantial pension contributions.

Louise Cooper, of the independent financial analyst CooperCity, said: “Mr Carney is charged as head of the Bank of England with keeping in check the excesses and greed of the bankers he will soon regulate. Yet he demands £250,000 a year to live in London on top of his more-than-generous salary.”

The package is also likely to raise eyebrows among MPs on the Treasury Select Committee, who are set to grill Mr Carney in a pre-appointment hearing next February. The committee chairman, Andrew Tyrie, said: “Colleagues will want to ask about every aspect of his appointment including, no doubt, remuneration.”

Although exorbitant by the standards of the rest of the UK, property agents said the £250,000 allowance would not go very far in an overheated London property market. Mr Carney has four children and will be on the hunt for a five-bedroom property. A Savills spokeswoman said: “You would struggle in Knightsbridge or Mayfair on that budget, maybe in Kensington, Richmond or Fulham you’ve got more chance of finding a family home.”