F&C's Scott calls for an end to scaremongering on UK banks

Whilst the near collapse of Northern Rock last year has given cause for many investors to be nervous, Scott believes this was an isolated case and the bank's downfall resulted from the riskier way in which it conducted business. He commented that this bank's reliance on the wholesale banking market meant that once the credit crisis took hold that source of funding became, to a large extent, closed. "As a consequence, the bank did not have the balance sheet strength to support the enormous growth in mortgage lending, much of it at very thin margins and increasingly high loan to values, t...