Email prankster catches Carney

LONDON • Mark Carney has shown his chivalrous side after being caught out in a hoax email exchange instigated by the same person who tricked Barclays PLC boss Jes Staley earlier this month.

Pretending to be Anthony Habgood, chairman of the Bank of England’s Court of Directors, the hoaxer emailed Governor Carney about the image of Jane Austen on the new 10- pound banknote before inviting him to a “Summer Nights-themed soirée.”

Carney responded twice before a comment from the fake account about “dashing bar ladies” at the event prompted the quick rebuttal of “Sorry Anthony. Not appropriate at all.” He did not reply to a two further emails from the hoaxer.

The exchange was posted on the Twitter feed of the self-styled “email prankster” on Tuesday and was confirmed by the Bank of England, which declined to comment further.

Prior to ending the conversation, Carney did make a joke about the drinking habits of one of his predecessors as BOE governor: “I will drink the martini and order another two. Apparently that was Eddie George’s daily intake ... before lunch.”

Carney’s slip follows a similar reported gaffe by Staley, who responded to emails from an impostor pretending to be the bank’s chairman, John McFarlane.

The latest security lapse is likely to be embarrassing to the Bank of England and could prompt City institutions to revisit their email policies, the Financial News said. Its website noted a speech Carney gave in January, in which he said: “For all financial firms, the advent of Fintech materially changes operational and cyber risks. Regulators need to be alert to new single point of failure risks such as if banks come to rely on common hosts of online banking or providers of cloud computing services. In recent years, the cyber threat to the system has grown as financial institutions have become more reliant on interconnected IT systems.” Bloomberg News