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Northern Rock and Banking Reform

If the problem of compensation can be resolved or the answer improved, one of the options to look at is what the Department of Trade and Industry, as it then was, used to do with insurance companies when it was the insurance regulator. If it felt that an insurance company was over-trading or not liquid enough, it would stop it writing all new business and put the company into run-off, which meant that the assets and the liabilities both had to be managed in the interests of all the counterparties to try and salvage as much as possible.