Rock deputy chief to step down

12 April 2012

The deputy chief executive of Northern Rock is to take early retirement.

David Baker is to step down from the bank, which was controversially nationalised earlier this month, on May 2.

He has spent 34 years at Northern Rock, and was deputy chief through the funding crisis that began last summer and eventually led to the Government takeover.

New executive chairman and City trouble shooter Ron Sandler was officially installed as the bank's executive chairman on February 22 after chancellor Alistair Darling signed off the nationalisation - the first such move since the 1970s.

Mr Baker, 54, said the decision to quit was "entirely personal".

He said: "Northern Rock has recently entered a new phase under temporary public ownership and I think this is the right thing to do at the right time.

"In Ron Sandler, the company has an outstanding business executive to successfully steer it through the period of temporary public ownership and return it to the private sector.

"I wish Ron and the management team every success."

The bank was nationalised after the Government rejected two rescue bids, one from Sir Richard Branson's Virgin Group and the other from an in-house management team at the bank. Chancellor Alistair Darling said neither proposal delivered "sufficient value for money" to the taxpayer.

Mr Baker, who joined the bank as a graduate trainee, was believed to have been involved in the failed in-house takeover offer.

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