Early on Friday morning, Moody’s announced it was downgrading Bradford & Bingley’s credit rating from A3 to Baa1 – the lowest rating of a UK bank and among the lowest in Europe.

The downgrade came just one working day before the shareholder vote on Monday that would have tied TPG, the US private equity group, into a deal to inject £179m of emergency funding and buy 23 per cent of B&B.