any comments, thoughts, on this stock.

Cynic you are avoiding the issue which is quite clear somebody took their "eye off the ball"and allowed NRK's directors to "gamble" with the depositors funds. The intervention of the goverment is coincidental and purely driven by politics.

The intervention of the government is prescribed in these circumstances.
It was obviously foreseen as a potential problem because some mandarin somewhere wrote it into the rules of lender of last resort!
Thereby hangs a question. If the problem was foreseen, surely someone must have forecast the circumstances that would give rise to it. Ipso facto, why did they not spot it sooner? And if it was foreseen then there must also be a disaster recovery policy. The FSA (God bless 'em) demands that even a two bit village insurance broker has a disaster recovery procedure in place.

cynic - re paving styones, blame culture etc.
Basically, I agree but only as afar as it goes - for when you look further it should be obvious that the blind cannot be expected to see faulty paving.

Similarly we have Rules for Directorsw and (hope) expect the FSA to charge anyone breaking that trust between Directors and shareholders - - but time again we see foolhardy directors selling shaers just before the sp falls (and nothing is done, like jailing them!)...we see companies having a happy agm and within weeks a statement saying they are trading at a severe loss (so sp falls) - yet no-one believes this dire situation waqsn't known in the company (so why does the fsa not act?....it was a false Market!).
IF we let individuals take their own responsibility then you don't need the FSA ( or the similarly named Food Standards Agency -!!).....let Market sink or swim on trust -

Just how long would that work?

You'd get the situation where any stock on "that market" would not be touched...it would be seen as a Nest of vipers.
If NRK goes to the wall...that may save the Government some money (our money!). . . . but it will do great harm and that's another reason for Regulation, to act as an overseer - but the way it appears to work is fundamentally flawed IMHO - it's a waste of time and money - having insufficient time to investigate day-to-day and isufficient power when it's all over . . . plus we don't know whose interests they are there to protect.

With civilisation we have to accept rules and someone has to police those rules.
It's just that we have too many of one and . . . . .

alan ... not sure that your logic is correct ..... certainly the board of NRK deluded itself that nothing could ever go wrong (heard it beofre have we?), and insofar as the board was in charge of the running the company, it carries the can .... whether or not there was anything criminal, in the broadest sense, remains to be see, though i doubt it.

as for BoE being the lender of the last resort, am i not correct in thinking that NRK (or any other financial institution) had to prove that it was lack of margin rather than being truly insolvent? .... i am sure you will accept that there is a considerable difference, even if many a company has had to fold for rather similar reasons - e.g. lack of cashflow rather than profitability.

hangon ..... not sure of the exact rules, but if a company goes into liquidation, the lender of the stock for the (short) CFDs has to allow a repurchase at some negotiated price.

hangon ..... it will do far far less harm to the system to allow NRK to go into liquidation or similar than for gov't to intervene on behalf of the shareholders

Personally I think greed blinkered the management - it was too easy for too long to get hold of cheap short term funds and they chose to ignore the risks. Surely that is where the FSA should have been watching, but they seem more concerned with threatening directors with prison if the banks carry out any transactions for people not identified several times over.Alan's point about having regulators who understand what they are supposed to regulate is very valid.

Cynic,
My understanding is that lender of last resort rules apply not to insolvency, but to maintaining the amount of free cash a bank must have over and above its liabilities to meet the threshold conditions of the FSA.
In other words, it borrowed the money not to keep itself solvent, but to meet the conditions the government laid down in the banking regulations as a "slush fund".
It was not required for day to day operation, or for liabilities until everyone withdrew their deposits!! This was of course caused by the media headlines.
My point is that NRK and FSA should have seen the impending approach of this requirement and taken action quicker.

quis custodiet custodies? ...... if the regulations, faulty as they may have been, were adhered to, then you cannot blame either FSA or even NRK, except that the latter were shown with hindsight to have been reckless ..... whether or not the regulations should have been changed a while back is a different question altogether.

Panmure Gordon cut its Northern Rock price target to 100 pence from 300 pence.

I will offer odds of a to a pinch of dog shit, that the FSA report in years to come highlights management failings as the root cause, but that still begs the question why it was not spotted earlier by the FSA.
One would hardly be happy to employ a watchdog that didn't watch! The scenario must have been envisioned in order that rules were prepared, so why was the policing ineffective enough that the NRK model was allowed to go unchecked since the FSA took control in Oct 2004?
It is no good just blaming the NRK management. If they reported accurately to the FSA, then the FSA have that question to answer. If NRK did not, then a criminal offence may have taken place which is another matter.

And Alliance & Leicester keep buying their own shares.

alan ..... you know far more than i about these things, but then i know bugger all! .... however, is not FSA's role merely to ensure that the regs are adhered to rather than to take a stand for or against a company's legal method of doing biz? ..... similarly, while a judge may consider a certain law to be unfair or just plain stupid, he can only pass judgement as the law then stands.

meanwhile i have, with a little difficulty, refrained from shorting further

Not quite!
The FSA mandate is not about law and criteria. It is about outcome. It is allowed to set the rules it sees fit to achieve the purpose of protecting the retail investor.
If it followed the rules perfectly, then the rules were wrong. If it didn't then it is negligent.
This is certainly the path it would follow against a regulated company.
Be aware the FSA maintains details of all financial activities with a massive computer model programmed to predict areas of concern in any regulated company. Surely the model picked up the low rates, high delinquincies and low deposits?

Driver...at least there nice and cheap -):

as usual, you make a very interesting point ..... i really do not know .... for sure any report will exonerate FSA, though that is not the point!

by the way, i believe NRK's delinquencies were far below the industry norm .... so now what? ..... NRK would defend itself and its practices quite robustly, and possibly successfully, using that criteria alone.

should have been very greedy and sold lots and lots more! ...... sp tumbling sharply again

=========

so have been not quite so greedy and sold just a goujon more at 139.3

going, going,















Gone.

so glad I sold last week when they bounced from 170p to 220p and down again...i managed to get 207p...bought at 279...still made a loss but not as bad as i could have done...phewee! Put money back into TAT up 10% wiped half my losses away...Thank you lord!

TATE..sorry! Life is sweeeet!

having held on to NRK when i promised i wouldn't (would have broken even), i was deservedly soundly spanked ...... fortunately i have now more than made up for that indiscretion!