a shop assistant counts piles of british pound sterling banknotes at an apple store in london britain november 18 2017 reutersrussell boyce london june 16 reuters  sterling fell sharply on thursday after the bank of england boe raised interest rates by 25 basis points confounding forecasts by some market participants of a bigger hike to fight soaring inflation the pound was last at 12062 against the dollar  down 09 on the day and compared to 12165 just before the boe decision against the euro sterling fell to 8629 pence and was down 05 expectations that the boe would hike by more than 25 basis points had grown after the us federal reserve on wednesday delivered its biggest hike since 1994 and the swiss national bank then shocked markets on thursday with a surprise hike of its own the benchmark ftse index ftse index fell 241 while 10year uk government bond yields rose to 255 reporting by lawrence white and sujata rao editing by dhara ranasinghe