Northern Rock 2008, Ron Sandler was appointed Executive Chairman by the government. Gary Hoffman became Chief Executive of Northern Rock in October 2008. With the appointment of Gary Hoffman, Ron Sandler changed to a Non-Executive Chairman position. Since the split of the bank into Northern Rock plc and Northern Rock (Asset Management) plc on 1 January 2010, each company had its boards of directors. On 4 November 2010 Northern Rock announced that Gary Hoffman had left the bank and was to move to NBNK Investments as CEO. One of the stipulations of Hoffman's appointment at NBNK was that they could not table
Government intervention during the subprime mortgage crisis difficulty finding finance to keep the business going and approached the Bank of England as lender of the last resort on the 12 September 2007. This caused mass concern about the bank's future. The Bank of England and the UK Government both insisted that the bank was secure and would not collapse. However this failed to stop thousands of customers withdrawing around £1billion from their savings. Northern Rock's share price plummeted and intense pressure from the media, political opposition parties and customers of Northern Rock, forced the Government to nationalize it on 17 February 2008 (see Nationalisation of Northern Rock).