Northern Rock nationalisation For Northern Rock, the drama that ended early on Friday, when the Bank of England dotted the ‘i’s and crossed the ‘t’s on an emergency cash injection, began more than a month earlier.
The Newcastle-based lender’s world changed for ever on August 9, the day when a crisis of confidence hit the money markets, causing liquidity to dry up in the banking system. It was also the day that Northern Rock’s executives realised their 10-year run in the capital markets was over. For a month, they tried to weather the storm. But a week ago, the bank’s directors accepted the inevitable and formally asked the Bank of England for an emergency line of credit. With that, the first bail-out of a British bank for 15 years was under way.
