Rock campaigners ask PM for talks

TEN years after the collapse of Northern Rock, campaigners are still calling for compensation for shareholders who lost out when the bank was nationalised.

Six pensioners from the North and Scotland travelled to London to deliver a letter to 10 Downing Street asking the Prime Minister to consider their case.

They included Dennis Grainger, a former Northern Rock finance manager who worked for the bank for 10 years.

He said: “We are not making any demands.

“We just hope the Prime Minister will consider the points we make in our letter and perhaps allow us to meet her so we can explain more.”

Mr Grainger is chairman of the Northern Rock Small Shareholder Action Group, which is calling for fair compensation for 150,000 small shareholders who received no compensation when the Government took ownership of the bank in 2007.

They argue that the Labour Government at the time always intended to sell the bank at a profit.

Mr Grainger said he had attempted to persuade former Prime Minister David Cameron to look into the issue with no success, but he hoped Theresa May might be more receptive.

“Three times I tried to get a meeting with David Cameron to ask him to review the unfair handling by the previous disingenuous administration,” he said.

The letter delivered to the Prime Minister states: “As the UK marks the 10th anniversary of the Northern Rock crisis in 2007, may we suggest to you that it would be appropriate now to try and achieve a just closure on an equitable, morally sound and fair basis.”

It is 10 years since crowds of people queued outside the bank’s branches to withdraw their money, after news broke that it had asked the Bank of England for an emergency loan.

Customers feared losing their life savings if the struggling bank collapsed.

The nationalisation of Northern Rock meant that savers’ money was safe – but shareholders lost their equity.

And in many cases, the shareholders were also savers who had received shares when the former building society converted.