“Over the next few months, inflation will continue upward trend. Financial agents are forecasting a pronounced acceleration in the short term, albeit a fleeting one. The critical task for authorities will be to prevent the development of behaviour that fans inflation over the long run,” the bank said.

To demonstrate such anti-inflation aims, the European Central Bank increased interest rates by a quarter percentage point to 4.25 per cent on 3 July, at a time when many economists have fretted about slowing global growth and even a possible recession in parts of Europe.

Lombard Odier’s note comes at a time when high net worth individuals need to consider how to protect their wealth in real terms against the potential ravages of a sustained increase in inflation levels.

The Swiss bank said that a number of forces that had capped, or reduced, prices during much of the present and previous decade have either halted or abated significantly. For example, it said that globalisation, which at one stage had had an anti-inflationary impact, is now fuelling inflation in emerging countries as wages and prices converge.

However, Lombard Odier said a number of factors should prevent runaway inflation in the medium term, even though price pressures are building. It said the credit crisis, the subsequent slowing in growth rates and the impact of high oil prices as a sort of tax on growth will weaken some upward price pressures. It also argued that trade unions have lost some of their old ability to influence prices significantly. And the bank welcomed the fact that, so far, central banks have not turned commodity price rises into more broad-based price spikes by printing money.