A year after Rock’s collapse, the verdict on key players

News of the £25billion bailout that Thursday night caused panic in the City and beyond. The next morning, Northern Rock shares crashed and queues of customers withdrew savings from the bank's branches up and down the country.

It was the first run on a British bank since Victorian times and, with Britain teetering on the brink of recession, the ramifications continue to this day.

The collapse of Rock was the moment the global credit crunch hit home in the UK. For many in the City, it spelled the end of glittering careers. For politicians and regulators, it showed them up in a new, far-from-flattering light:

Northern Rock
Adam Applegarth, a golden boy of British banking, crashed down to earth with a bang, utterly derided for the reckless business model he imposed on the once-proud Geordie institution.

Still popular at Sunderland Cricket Club, where his batting average has benefited from his new-found spare time, he is far less so with the thousands who lost their jobs.

The 46-year-old became chief executive at the bank in 2001 aged just 39, having joined as a graduate trainee in 1983. He transformed the former building society into a lending giant, specialising in high-risk 125% mortgages worth six times salary — unheard of before the era of cheap credit.

To fund the rapid expansion of the mortgage business, the £1.3million-a-year man borrowed heavily in the money markets.

In July last year, just weeks before the bank ran out of funds, he insisted the outlook for the business remained "very positive".

Applegarth has since said "life changed" on 9 August 2007 when "the markets just froze" and the house of cards over which he presided plunged into crisis. He eventually quit in November with his reputation in tatters.

Married with two children, he lives in a £2.5million house in Northumberland. Of his first job at Northern Rock, Applegarth once joked: "As a cashier, I was particularly inept because I could never get the till to balance." Not just as a cashier, it seems.

Sir Derek Wanless may be chairman of Northumbrian Water, vice chairman of the Statistics Commission and a member of the Board for Actuarial Standards but he will always be remembered as the man at the heart of Northern Rock when it imploded.

The ex-NatWest boss and adviser to Gordon Brown headed Rock's audit and risk committees — but did not seem to mind the bank's reckless lending habits.

Journalist and scientist Matt Ridley remains popular in the world of academia, but like Applegarth will struggle to find a way back in to high-level business.

The Eton-and Oxford-educated aristocrat stepped down as chairman of Northern Rock — a role his father Viscount Ridley once filled — in October last year after he was accused of "harming the reputation of the banking industry".

It is so far so good for Zimbabwe-born Ron Sandler, the former Lloyd's of London chief brought in as executive chairman by the Government to run Northern Rock after it was nationalised.

The financial troubleshooter has since appointed a new chief executive, former Barclays man Gary Hoffmann, and top of the list of priorities are halving the bank's £100billion mortgage book, repaying the Bank of England loan, and releasing the Government of its £75billion of guarantees.

The regulators
Clive Briault was the Financial Services Authority fall guy, taking the blame for the shambolic way the City watchdog monitored Northern Rock in the run-up to its dramatic demise.

As head of the retail division, Briault was charged with supervising Northern Rock and became the most senior victim at the FSA. He did not do badly out of it, however, walking away with a £612,000 farewell package in what critics branded a reward for failure.

In contrast, outgoing chairman Sir Callum McCarthy looks down but not out. He was given an ear-bashing by furious MPs on the Treasury Select Committee but along with new chief executive Hector Sants has admitted the FSA's failings, and is orchestrating root-and-branch reform of how the watchdog operates — something the City has given him credit for.

However, the FSA looks to have ceded ground to the Bank of England over bank stability.

It was a bruising battle for Mervyn King, but a battle he looks to have won.

The Bank of England Governor clashed with both the Treasury and the FSA over how to deal with Rock and the credit crunch, but retained the support of large parts of the City and the country.

He was eventually given a second term at Threadneedle Street and when new legislation is brought in, it looks like King will have more say than ever over the regulation and rescue of UK banks.

King's deputy, Sir John Gieve, was another high-profile casualty, and leaves the Bank next year bearing scars. As head of financial stability at Threadneedle Street, he was accused of being asleep on the job as Northern Rock teetered on the brink of collapse, even though he was in fact away arranging and attending a family funeral.

Gieve was later sacrificed in the horse trading that led to the deal between the Treasury and the Bank of England over the future shape of banking regulation.

The politicians
The Northern Rock debacle could mark the beginning of the end for Gordon Brown. A year ago, the new Prime Minister was flying high in the polls, but 12 months later it is a very different story.

Northern Rock on its own cannot account for the turnaround in his fortunes, but it has played a major part.

Brown and his Chancellor Alistair Darling were accused of dithering while Northern Rock burned. Unlike in America, where banks were rescued overnight, it took the Government months to come up with a plan for Northern Rock.

In the end, that plan was nationalisation, a chilling reminder of Labour in the 1970s, and a hammer blow for Brown's reputation for economic competence.

It gave Opposition parties an easy stick with which to beat the Government. Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesman Vince Cable never missed a chance. Rarely off the TV screens, the former economist won widespread praise for his dissection of Northern Rock's and the Government's failings.

The speculators
Hedge fund speculators Philip Richards of RAB Capital and Jon Wood of Global lost more than £100million betting on Northern Rock.

In what can only be described as a catastrophic blunder at the height of the crisis, the pair gambled on Northern Rock shares rising. When the bank was finally nationalised, the shares were rendered worthless.

To cap a horrendous year for Richards, in which RAB profits have slumped, he was last week replaced as chief executive to concentrate on managing its special situations fund.