King: RBS and HBOS were on brink of collapse

Bank of England governor, Mervyn King, says RBS and HBOS were within hours of a liquidity shortfall on 6 October 2008, and the day after, as the country's financial system came to the brink of collapse.

Bloomberg reports King as saying "two of our major banks which had had difficulty in obtaining funding could raise money only for one week then only for one day, and then on that Monday and Tuesday it was not possible even for those two banks really to be confident they could get to the end of the day," in an interview to be broadcast later today by the BBC. The BBC says King was referring to Royal Bank of Scotland and HBOS, correcting its original press release which said Lloyds TSB had been one of the banks involved. King was interviewed for the BBC program, The Love of Money, which...