LONDON: The Bank of England allotted a record 29.076 billion pounds ($37.8 billion) on Thursday in its weekly short-term repo operation, which is designed to smooth out volatility in lending markets as it unwinds its quantitative easing programme.

Sums allotted in the repo have been hitting fresh records on an almost weekly basis since April.

Bank of England to hold rate despite slowing inflation

But this week also marked a record jump in the sum allotted, with a 6.4-billion-pound increase from the 22.657 billion pounds allotted last week.