Thousands of former Northern Rock shareholders are planning to restart their fight for compensation after the nationalised bank was revealed to have £5bn of surplus equity.
The 150,000 shareholders in the bank were paid nothing for their stakes when the bank was taken over by the government in February 2008.
However, Northern Rock paid back its final loan to the government in April last year and Northern Rock Asset Management, the company create to manage the run-off, handed the Treasury a £2.7bn dividend.
The 2019 accounts suggest the state is due a further £2.4bn.
Dennis Grainger, chairman of the Northern Rock Small Shareholder Action Group, said that he would be writing to the prime minister and to the chancellor to recover the excess profits made by the Treasury from the bank’s 2008 nationalisation, saying it was clearly a case of “unjust enrichment”.
