Bank of England Governor Mervyn King regrets failing to act swiftly enough to prevent a run on the Northern Rock bank, Britain's first in more than a century, then-finance minister Alistair Darling was quoted as saying.
Unlike his counterparts at other central banks, King was slow to respond when markets seized up in August 2007, seemingly more concerned about moral hazard if the BoE stepped in to unjam the freeze. Some critics blamed the delay for the run on Northern Rock which led to its nationalisation.
Thousands of Britons queued for hours to get their money out of the embattled bank and the television pictures were beamed across the world. The panic prompted King to say: "I bitterly regret not thinking of these issues sooner - I should have done so", according to excerpts from a book by Darling cited in several British newspapers on Saturday ahead of its release next week.
Darling describes the bespectacled, schoolmasterly King as "impish" and "amazingly stubborn and exasperating" in his memoir of the financial crisis, called "Back from the Brink: 1,000 Days at Number 11". The Daily Telegraph newspaper said on Friday the book also revealed Darling's view that strained relations between the Bank of England and the Financial Services Authority were "a major reason why the banking collapse was not averted".
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