Prime minister Gordon Brown has spoken out against statements made by Bank of England governor Mervyn King calling for the UK's largest financial institutions to be broken up.Mr King had suggested that by separating large banks into smaller units, the UK could avoid future public bailouts of the financial sector.However, responding to questions on the subject posed in parliament, Mr Brown rejected the notion that a smaller bank was necessarily a safer bank and expressed opposition to the separation of investment and retail arms of major financial corporations.Speaking at a Reuters Newsmaker event, chancellor Alistair Darling iterated the prime minister's position."I don't think you can decide that in one type of banking you will intervene and in one type you can't," he said, adding that the response to the financial crisis must be global.In foreign exchange trading yesterday (October 21st), sterling rose to a one-month high on the back of Mr King's speech, which also highlighted improving prospects for economic recovery.