Reuters UK (Free subscription) | 4 hours ago
LONDON (Reuters) - Small Bradford & Bingley shareholders fear that like investors in Northern Rock they stand to lose everything after the government bailed out the bank with a mixture of nationalisation and asset disposals.
Financial Perspectives (Free subscription) | 8 hours ago
The events surrounding the slow death of the Northern Rock mortgage bank get more and more surrealistic by the day. Back in July last year it was actually the leading mortgage lender in the UK with 19% of the entire market for new mortgages sold in the first half of the year. Bearing in mind that [...]
Great apps (Free subscription) | 6 hours ago
A random selection of statistics re UK mortgage market - UK Govt nows owns 11% of UK mortgages by value following nationalisation of Northern Rock and Bradford & Bingley; combined Lloyds + HBOS own 28% - If the UK property market falls 25% from its peak, having already managed 12.5%, 2.5 million borrowers will have negative equity - 10% of UK mortgages by value are sub-prime - 10% of UK mortgages by...
VEF French Property: Latest News (Free subscription) | 11 hours ago
For anyone living and working in the UK, there is only one thing on their minds, who is going to be the next victim of the “credit crunch”? We have seen the collapse or takeover of Northern Rock, Lehman Brothers, HBOS and Bradford & Bingley. Everyday we turn on the news to hear stories of rising energy & food prices and falling property prices. There is a general sense of doom and gloom.
Chef Mojo (Free subscription) | 12 hours ago
From The Spectator: If you had purchased £1000 of Northern Rock shares one year ago it would now be worth £4.95, with HBOS, earlier this week your £1000 would have been worth £16.50, £1000 invested in XL Leisure would now...
Scotsman.com (Free subscription) | 20 hours ago
Surely Northern Rock and the Irish banks should pay lower rates of interest to depositors if they have full government backing.
The West Virginia Rebel's Blog (Free subscription) | 20 hours ago
Who says recycling can't be profitable? : If you had purchased £1000 of Northern Rock shares one year ago it would now be worth £4.95, with HBOS, earlier this week your £1000 would have been worth £16.50, £1000 invested in XL Leisure would now be worth less than £5, but if you bought £1000 worth of Tennents Lager one year ago, drank it all, then took the empty cans to an aluminium re-cycling plant,...
John Redwood's Diary (Free subscription) | yesterday
Apparently governments are made of money. Today Germany has taken far reaching action, following more problems at Hypo Real Estate. The pressure is on the UK by the media to announce a similar guarantee. That is what we were effectively offered when the run on Northern Rock became serious. At some point governemnt and Regulators have to [...]
The UK Housing Bubble (Free subscription) | yesterday
I just had a quick look at UK public sector indebtedness. Late last year, there was a 7 percent of GDP surge public sector debt. The data does not say why, but I am almost certain that the increased debt is due to Northern Rock. The data only goes up to August, so we haven't yet seen the impact of the Bradford and Bingley on Government balance sheet. Banking crises don't come cheap. Here are two more...
Times Online (Free subscription) | yesterday
With the demise of Bradford & Bingley, hard on the heels of HBOS and not that long after Northern Rock, the specialist mortgage bank is no more. All of them came out of the building-society sector, mixed it with the big boys of banking - and failed. The contrast with the early 1990s, when Britain’s lenders survived a long housing recession pretty much intact, is stark.
Norfolk Blogger (Free subscription) | 04/10/2008
The BBC's Robert Peston has been ahead of the government in almost every respect during the credit crunch. He predicted the problems faced by Northern Rock, Bradford and Bingley and Alliance and Leicester, he remarked months before the credit crunch started that their were very grey clouds on the horizon, and he also broke the News of the HBOS takeover by Lloyds TSB before anyone else knew. Seemingly,...
Living The Grand Life (Free subscription) | 04/10/2008
What happened What could have happened. Stolen entirely from Samizdata: If you had purchased £1000 of Northern Rock shares one year ago it would now be worth £4.95, with HBOS, earlier this week your £1000 would have been worth £16.50, £1000 invested in XL Leisure would now be worth less than £5, but if you bought £1000 worth of Tennents Lager one year ago, drank it all, then took the empty cans to...
The Telegraph (Free subscription) | 03/10/2008
How long is corporate memory? So many banks have been caught out in the current game of musical chairs it is easy to forget that the whole thing kicked off in the UK at least with Northern Rock.
Banking Times: Daily Banking News (Free subscription) | 03/10/2008
Northern Rock has withdrawn over half its savings products because of high demand for new accounts. The Government’s delay in increasing the cover provided under the Financial Services Compensation Scheme for savers’ deposits is prompting consumers to seek safe-havens for their money. The guarantee currently stands at £35,000 and remains under review but savers with nationalised Northern [...]
DealBook (Free subscription) | 03/10/2008
In September 2007, consumers stood in line to withdraw their money from the troubled British lender Northern Rock. A year later, they were standing in line again, this time to put money back into the bank, The New York Times’s Julia Werdigier reports. Confidence in Britain’s banks has become so fragile that Northern Rock, which was [...]
