D-day for Rock survival bid

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Northern Rock's advisers, Blackstone, Citi and Merrill Lynch have reportedly sought to drum up would-be buyers from as far afield as China in an effort to salvage the UK's first casualty of the worldwide credit crunch.

Reports have even suggested that the Government could "nationalise" the lender - taking over and breaking up the business in a bid to recoup taxpayers' cash.

This extreme option aside, only four teams have so far expressed public interest in the lender.

The Newcastle-based group was at the centre of a financial storm in September after soaring borrowing costs forced the bank into a funding bail-out from the Bank of England.

But the lender's shareholders are unlikely to gain any respite from the rescue due to the £20 billion-plus debt burden racked up so far by the business. Shares in the company were trading at record lows on Thursday as hopes of a return for investors waned.

The UK's fifth-largest mortgage lender's stock market value has now slumped to little more than a tenth of the £5.2 billion it was worth in February.

Such is the sensitivity over the future of the company that it gained an injunction against two newspapers this week when a confidential sales document was leaked.

The deadline for proposals is on Friday, although a Northern Rock spokeswoman said it will make an announcement when there is "greater clarity" over the future of the business.

A sale of the whole company is considered extremely unlikely. Lloyds TSB looked at a potential deal before the crisis emerged in September, but pulled out because the Bank of England refused to support the deal with billions of pounds in loans.