Martin Vander Weyer examines who should be held responsible for the Northern Rock crisis and finds that as much as any individual, the system that Gordon Brown put in place in 1997 should be held responsible.
Martin Vander Weyer
The search for suspects goes on, the theories become more bizarre by the day, and yet no one’s quite sure whether there’s really a body.
I speak of course of Northern Rock. Is it dead on its feet, creditworthiness destroyed, business model incapable of withstanding the stormy market conditions ahead, its management humiliated? Or will it now stagger on under its Treasury guarantee and award chief executive Adam Applegarth and his team a round of handsome bonuses at the end of the year to recognize their fortitude? That would indeed be the strangest of outcomes of this astonishing week, but it is beginning to look possible.
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