We're doing the same thing... The economic analysis that I've seen runs the gamut, from "this is the weakest it will ever get, wait for it to get better" to "we could see gas prices at US$5/gal soon, and the dollar will slide a further 10-50% against the euro and sterling."
The best we can come up with is this: We're moving some funds over to sterling now (upon our house sale closing later this month), and keeping some here invested in our retirement and some US real estate holdings. That way, we figure we're a bit hedged. If this turns out to be the weakest the dollar ever gets, then at least we've still got some of our holdings in USD; if it slides further, we'll thank our lucky stars that at least we've got our deposit in sterling so we can get (a huge mortgage on) a (modest) flat in (the outskirts of) London.
As for the logistics of it all: We've recently opened an account with HSBC, which have branches all around the world and are one of the largest of the high street banks in the UK. They have a special programme called Premier, whereby if you deposit enough money with them (in excess of US$100k), you can open both a USD and a Sterling account. This sounds like it's ridiculous sum of money, but we rolled our IRAs over into IRA accounts with HSBC brokerage (that counts towards the minimum) and then once we have some proceeds from our house sale, it'll push us over the top. The strange thing about it is, you have to have a US account with HSBC for six months before they can open the UK account; we did it last month and we're not moving until the first of the year so it's fine for us. (
http://www.premier.hsbc.com/)
They also have an offshore version of the same account, which might be a better option, as I don't think you have to delay in opening a sterling account. Something to look into. (
http://www.offshore.hsbc.com/premier/)
-Baylor.
