Northern Rock

Northern Rock is planning to double staff numbers at its debt management department, suggesting the nationalised bank is expecting repossessions and arrears to increase.

Shareholders have approved the $2.2bn takeover of Bear Stearns by JP Morgan Chase it was announced today.

Taxpayers' money tied up in Northern Rock is more at risk than first thought, the nationalised lender's chairman, Ron Sandler, has conceded, as the credit crisis threatens to undermine its restructuring, The Telegraph reports.

Arrears at Northern Rock have increased due to a squeeze on the availability of mortgages in recent months.

Northern Rock's shareholders have begun a legal challenge against the Government to receive compensation for the shares lost when the bank was nationalised.

The FSA needs to make clear whether it refers to lenders, intermediaries or both when communicating messages about the performance of firms, according to the Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML).

The FSA has not sacked a single member of staff over the failed supervision of Northern Rock it was revealed today.

Northern Rock has revealed details of 2,000 redundancies to take place over the next few years.

The FSA has appointed Naguib Kheraj, a former finance director at Barclays, to help it prevent a future crisis similar to that seen at Northern Rock.

The European Commission (EC) has launched an investigation into the UK Government's Northern Rock restructuring package.