A FINANCE chief under investigation as part of a City watchdog probe into mortgage figure manipulation at nationalised lender Northern Rock has left the business.
The bank said David Jones had quit the asset management side of the firm with immediate effect “to focus on an ongoing Financial Services Authority investigation into matters relating to a period before the company entered public ownership”.
It is believed the regulator is investigating Mr Jones in relation to a recent inquiry into misleading mortgage arrears figures at the lender.
Details of the FSA investigation emerged last week when former deputy chief executive David Baker was fined £504,000 and banned from working in any regulated activity after the watchdog found that he misled shareholders and analysts by quoting inaccurate data.
A £140,000 fine was also handed to Northern Rock’s former managing credit director Richard Barclay for failing to ensure the accuracy of the figures.
Newcastle-based Northern Rock collapsed into public ownership in early 2008 after it was forced to seek emergency funding from the Bank of England and suffered the first run on a UK bank for 150 years.
The bank has now been split into “good” and “bad” banks.
The former contains £10.3bn of the mortgage book and £19bn in retail savings and is set to return to the private sector. The latter is the asset management business, which holds about £50bn of residential mortgages and unsecured loans of £3.9bn.
