Midas lost his touch...

Following the announcement of Northern Rocks results yesterday (£1.4 Billion Loss), my Sales & Marketing Director John Eastgate brought me in a copy of a news clipping from the day he got married. 4th April 1996.

Rock of Gold was the headline and the story was all about the potential £1,000 windfalls that savers and borrowers could receive following its announcement the previous day that it planned to become a bank.

I was particularly drawn to a section in the article that read: “Many analysts believe it is too small to survive independently, But Chairman Robert Dickinson said his board would not consider any approaches – even though a takeover could mean bigger windfalls. In fact Northern Rock, based in Newcastle upon Tyne, said it could take over others and the spotlight immediately fell on the Newcastle Building Society.”

Ironic really, Northern Rock has always had an air of arrogance about it, and it was in my view, in part that arrogance that led it to run out of funding and eventually be forced to seek a rescue partner in the form of the UK Government/tax payer.

Newcastle Building Society Still stands firm as Mutual Building Society over 12 years later, whilst the Rock and every other building society that became a bank have to all intents and purposes gone:

Report and accounts for Northern Rock:

http://companyinfo.northernrock.co.uk/downloads/2008_annual_report.pdf