THERE will be no shutting the shop early for Sir Edward George, who retires as Governor of the Bank of England at midnight tonight. Sir Edward’s last day at the Bank will be spent in a series of high-level meetings, leaving any celebrations on ice until the end of the working day.

Sir Edward’s final day in post will begin in Basle, Switzerland, where he is attending the annual meeting of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS). The BIS acts as the central bankers’ central bank, and the meeting will be Sir Edward’s final opportunity to rub shoulders with his counterparts around the world.

Sir Edward is chair of the BIS’s G-10 central banking committee, a forum for central bankers from the largest industrialised countries. He can expect his central banking colleagues to pay generous tribute to his work in Basle.

They will then get down to the serious business of wrestling with ways to prevent deflation and start to get world economies moving again.

In Basle last night, Sir Edward gave what must be his last prognosis on the world economy, saying, in typically understated fashion, that bankers were expecting a “gradual, sluggish pick-up across the world moving into next year”.

The Governor’s Canadian counterpart, David Dodge, was equally cautious, saying: “The mood is one of guarded optimism . . . but with ‘guarded’ kind of underlined.”

Sir Edward flies back to London in the early afternoon, and a spokeswoman for the Bank said he was expected in the office as normal before the end of the working day. His is likely to spend the afternoon finalising the handover to his successor, Mervyn King.

Sir Edward, 64, has spent ten years at the Bank’s helm, having been promoted from Deputy Governor in July 1993. He joined the Bank in 1962 after graduating from Cambridge, and rose to be appointed Deputy to Robin Leigh-Pemberton in March 1990.

Mr King, one of two Deputy Governors, was confirmed as the next Governor last November. A respected academic, he was professor of economics at the London School of Economics before joining the Bank in 1991. Mr King was initially chief economist at the Bank, and was promoted to Deputy Governor for Monetary Policy in 1997. He was the City’s favoured candidate to succeed Sir Edward as Governor.