The Failure of Northern Rock in the Light of Banking Economics and Regulation
Introduction
Increasing global connectivity and integration in today’s world ensures that almost any serious problem has worldwide ramifications. The global financial system can serve as a key example of this phenomenon. Very recently, Britain’s fifth-largest mortgage lender Northern Rock was rescued by emergency funding from the Bank of England. This made the Newcastle-based firm the highest profile UK victim of the global credit crunch that had been triggered by the sub-prime mortgage crisis in the US. The bank run on Northern Rock that followed was unprecedented in recent UK monetary history. The Overend Guerney crash of 1866 was the last recorded bank run in the UK, before Northern Rock lost over £2 billion, starting on the 14th of September 2007.
Background
The run on Northern Rock can be considered as the most vivid indication of the contagion that consumed the financial markets around the world. The company did no overseas lending. Nevertheless, the spill-over effects of the failing US mortgage market sealed the fate of the company when the money markets that Northern Rock had depended on for years crashed at the start of August 2007.
The sub-prime mortgage market crisis started in the United States in the fall of 2006 and took hold as a global financial crisis by July 2007. Due to innovations in securitization, the risks from these sub-prime mortgages had to be shared more broadly with investors which essentially led to the ripple effects in the world-wide economy. The mortgages are generally repackaged into a variety of complex investment securities which are bought by institutions to diversify their portfolios. In the case of the US sub-prime mortgage ...