The Bank will look to purchase up to £10bn of corporate bonds from firms "making a material contribution to the UK economy" in order to impart economic stimulus.
The Bank will also consider companies with significant revenues in the UK, serves a large number of customers in the UK or has a number of operating sites in the UK.
The Bank says it aims to purchase a balanced portfolio of bonds across eligible issuers and sectors, however bonds issued by firms it regulates – such as banks, building societies, and insurance companies – will not be eligible.
The Bank will structure each auction around certain sectors and plans to include each eligible bond in an auction at least once a week.
110 companies are currently eligible for the programme, including BAE Systems, BT, Vodafone, GlaxoSmithKline, Apple, McDonald's and Walmart.
The scheme aims to provide monetary stimulus by lowering the yields on corporate bonds, thereby reducing the cost of borrowing for companies; by triggering portfolio rebalancing into riskier assets by sellers of assets; and by stimulating new issuance of corporate bonds.
The scheme is part of a package of measures announced last month alongside the Bank Rate cut.
Other measures include a new Term Funding Scheme which provides funding to banks at rates close to Bank Rate, and an expansion of the asset purchase scheme for UK government bonds by £60 billion, taking the total stock of these asset purchases to £435 billion.
