Martin Gilbert: What to learn from the run on the Rock

Ten years since the event

The financial crisis was so calamitous that there are certain points we all remember well. The run on Northern Rock ten years ago this week is one of them, writes Aberdeen Standard Investments CEO Martin Gilbert.

Those patient queues of customers have become a symbol of the sorry saga of the financial crisis. The banking industry has changed enormously. But what have we learnt? Perhaps the most obvious lesson is a bank run is still incredibly hard to stop once it takes hold. There was an unsettlingly familiar pattern to what happened. The mood in the UK was already pretty febrile before the run began. There was certainly a sense that the ‘credit crunch', as we were calling it at the time, was significant but it appeared remote to most people. Then, when the BBC reported that Northern Rock was ...