Northern Crock

Just reflecting... do I feel £747m richer, after the cost of this bank bailout was £1.4bn. That odious Osborne has sold it cheap.

Who remembers those weird things called building societies... I do cos I used to work for one. Of the former BSs that became banks, there is not a single one left. Nope, not a single one. Halifax - now part of Lloyds. Northern Rock - now Virgin. And of those that became part of banks, well most of the names have disappeared - C&G is an exception.

I wonder if they would have survived on their own as mutuals. I used to work for Birmingham Midshires Building Society, I used to run the legal team there. It was bought by Halifax, as the directors felt that it would not survive on its own, and would have such a rosy future with such a well-capitalised bank, it was just a sell out, and of course Halifax quickly went over the cliff. I used to sit in Board meetings as the company secretary, listening to all this gibberish.

What I couldn't believe at the time was the greed of people rushing to open an account to get their hands on a few hundred pounds payout. I got it because I had an account - the only reason for that was that the office, on the north-western edge of Wolverhampton, was miles away from a cash machine so I kept £50 in an account just so I could go to the staff till at lunchtime. Branches had huge queues of gold diggers, the arrant greed of people wanting something for nothing was just unbelievable. It was suggested that we Head Office people should go into branches on Saturdays to help the branch staff, well I would have been in the way, I didn't have a clue how to operate the counter systems.

I didn't go round opening accounts with all and sundry. Of those who did and got a few hundred quid from each of them, I wonder how many of them have any of it left, or anything to show for it.

[andrewsmith]

£1.4Bn is a bargin

The bad debt book at NRAM is about £25Bn or something totally stupid (combined bad debts of Rock, Bradford & Bungle and bits of RBS and HBOS).

Ed, the Rock went the way of the American Mortgage firms- cash dried up to lend at 110% of property value and the brown well and truely hit the fan.
The silly thing is Labour screwed up. LloydsTSB offered to buy the Rock for share value (£3.50 roughly at the time) and it was blocked, then LloydsTSB were forced to buy HBOS (the bank that needed nationalised) and its effectively screwed up 3 banks instead of one.

Yes I'm bitter on this one as my folks lost about £12k (weeks before it went tits up) and a lot of people around here lost out.


Ironically a lot of us were paid to keep our cash in the rock (rules was you didn't withdraw in the panic), this is what the North East look like

Originally Posted by andrewsmith

Ironically a lot of us were paid to keep our cash in the rock (rules was you didn't withdraw in the panic), this is what the North East look like

Are you sure that wasn't a queue for the new iPhone (o2 and Carphoen warehouse there in the pic)?

[Dave20046]

If it helps I loosely know the former big boss man and he's minted fo life....

...

[dizzyblonde]

I remember when the Hx was a building society, hell I walk past the graveyard of the men who were the founders of it rather often, they'd be turning in their grave to see what has happened to it these days. My dad helped put in all the air cons, plumbing and heating in the head office when they built it. Prince Charles proclaiming it was a thing of beauty, or was it an eyesore and blot on a beautiful architectural town?
I used to have a Britannia Building society account, to which my wages from my teenage paper round were paid into. Still got the account book for that, not that its much use lol.

Originally Posted by andrewsmith

Ironically a lot of us were paid to keep our cash in the rock (rules was you didn't withdraw in the panic), this is what the North East look like

You wait for the time when those queues are at every bank because they have bailed each country and each other out so much, swindling us lot along the way!

Its coming, and its not far away.

[andrewsmith]

Originally Posted by Dave20046

If it helps I loosely know the former big boss man and he's minted fo life....

...

Mr A Crosier you mean

The man that has been paid to keep quiet

[Dave20046]

CAn't say I know exactly what happened but I was a little shocked to find someone who was in charge of a company that went down so spectacularly could still be sooo rich.to me, you should get paid well when things are going well and lose it when you...lose it.
If people have nothing to lose then any idiot with a gung ho attitude could do their job safe in the knowledge there'll be no come uppance

[punyXpress]

Like Bankers gambling with clients' & employers' funds knowing that winnings are theirs & losses are ours?