The U.K. pound fell against the dollar and the euro after the Bank of England said it will spend an additional 50 billion pounds ($75 billion) as it seeks to revive the economy. The Bank of England said it will increase the size of its asset purchase program to 125 billion pounds, according to a statement released after today’s monthly meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee. Policy makers kept the benchmark interest rate at a record low of 0.5 percent as predicted by all but one of 61 economists surveyed by Bloomberg. “There’s a risk the MPC may have to boost quantitative easing as they’re going through their stock fairly quickly,” Paul Robson, a London-based currency strategist at Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc, said before the decision was announced. “That could be seen as sterling negative.” The pound dropped 0.2 percent to 88.28 pence per euro by 12:30 p.m. in London. It fell 0.4 percent to $1.5070 and pared its gain to 149.87 yen, after reaching 150.90 yen earlier. U.K. bonds stayed lower with the yield on the 10-year gilt rising seven basis points to 3.67 percent. Yields move inversely to bond prices. The pound gained 1.5 percent versus the dollar in the week following the Bank of England’s meeting on April 9, when it kept interest rates on hold and maintained its so-called quantitative-easing strategy. It rose 1.6 percent versus the euro in that period.

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