Irresponsible lending

pvt

antrobus wrote: »

NR was still bust though.

It was never bust, it was illiquid. It needed loans from the BoE (which the BoE was required to provide) to bridge its liquidity problem. NR was servicing those loans, along with their punitive interest rates, as agreed until the government decided it didn't like the idea of it any more. Shortly before the government confiscated the bank off its owners two separate offers were made to purchase the bank from its owners as a going concern for quite a significant value. Ironically, one of those was Virgin, who the government has since sold it to for an awful lot less. But the government did not allow that sale to happen at the time because it believed it could nationalise it and make money selling it later. A strategy that demonstrably backfired on them.