NORTHERN Rock was highlighted as a potential “weak link” in the British banking system three years before its near collapse.

A risk simulation planning exercise involving the Financial Services Authority (FSA), the Bank of England and the Treasury, in 2004, pinpointed weaknesses in the business practices of the Newcastle-based mortgage lender.

It has emerged that Northern Rock and its bigger counterpart HBOS were at the centre of a 2004 “war game” held by regulators to test how banks could cope with sudden turmoil in mortgage markets.

Among scenarios put to the crisis management exercise was a run on banks heavily exposed to the property sector, similar to the problems that Northern Rock found itself caught up in, by September 2007.

As a result, the Bank’s Financial Stability Review, of December 2004, predicted: “In times of market-wide stress, such shortterm wholesale liabilities could prove more vulnerable to sudden withdrawal, and, therefore, pose greater liquidity risks.”

The bank’s governor, Mervyn King, subsequently said that it appeared to show that financial crises which appear to start small can quickly grow.

Following the damage sustained to both banks in autumn 2007, which led to a Government bail-out of Northern Rock and the knock-on takeover of HBOS by Lloyds TSB, the commonlyheld view was that the crisis could not have been predicted.

But the Financial Times revealed on Saturday that the practices of both the Northern Rock and HBOS were considered in the think tank of 2004.

The regulators have confirmed that both banks’ mode of operation were examined in the scenarios examined in the 2004 exercise.

But, both the FSA and the Bank of England said that it was merely looking into identifying possible weak practices in the banking system, rather than predicting individual bank failure.