Sir Mervyn King to receive a life peerage Chancellor George Osborne, who confirmed the honour to guests at the event in the City of London, said that Sir Mervyn had "helped to lead our country through an extraordinary period." He added: "More than that, you have been the original thinker who has taken Britain on the journey that began with inflation targeting to monetary independence and now to far reaching reforms to prudential regulation and financial oversight. I can think of few people who have done more to shape our public discourse in the last 30 years and you have done so with integrity, intelligence and patriotism and also with a seemingly endless supply of sporting metaphors. So, here we go, you had to play on a sticky wicket but you leave with our economy now emerging from the ashes. Sir Mervyn took over the role of Governor of the Bank of England in 2003 and will leave at the end of the month after a decade in the role. Mark Carney, a Canadian central bank governor, will replace him in July. But Sir Mervyn's involvement with the Bank of England dates back far longer, with a stint as deputy governor between 1998 and 2003 preceded by his role as chief economist and post as a non-executive director. During his final speech at Mansion House, he described his time at the Bank as a "game of two halves." He said: "It turned out to be a rather exciting and dramatic game, full of incident, with a red card or two and a passionate and at times justifiably angry crowd. We shall have to wait for the historians of tomorrow to file the full match report. The Cambridge-educated economist also used the speech to call for more money to be pumped into the economy to underpin the UK's "modest" recovery. He demanded "decisive action" on Britain's part-nationalised banks, backing Chancellor George Osborne's announcement that the Government plans to sell its stake in Lloyds Banking Group. He said: "It is too soon to say the job of securing recovery is complete. There is a powerful case for more stimulus. However, his parting wish for another round of quantitative easing was denied this month after being outvoted in his final Bank rate-setting meeting.