Sants: NRock run avoidable if King had listened to me

Outgoing Financial Services Authority (FSA) chief Hector Sants has claimed the run on Northern Rock could have been avoided if the central bank had taken on board his recommendations.

In an interview with the BBC, Sants said he recommended that Lloyds TSB be granted a loan from the Bank of England (BoE) to facilitate a takeover of the troubled British bank, which had been hit by the subprime crisis. But he claims BoE governor, Sir Mervyn King, said the central bank would not provide the money, while Alastair Darling, the Chancellor at the time, was silent on the issue. Northern Rock was nationalised in 2008 following its near collapse. In the first run on a British bank in more than a century, depositors queued outside branches to withdraw their savings. "I thin...