I can only note with sadness the nationalisation of Northern Rock – an outcome I regarded as fairly well inevitable due to the desperately botched process from the original announcement of problems (not even made by Northern Rock itself) through to the guarantee and on to the sale process.

As I said earlier – this should be an object lesson to governments not to get involved. I would also add to that and say that there are a lot of takeaways from this for banks –  get the name risk procedures in place early and practice them often. Treat liquidity risk as, if anything, more important than credit risk. On a more personal note – make sure your risk management people are amongst your best.

Pay them well.