The government has sold £13 billion of former Northern Rock mortgages that taxpayers acquired during the financial crisis to US private equity firm Cerberus.

Northern Rock collapsed in 2007, triggering the financial crisis, and the government were forced to put millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money in to save it. The UK have now sold more than 85% of the assets of the Newcastle-based lender, as part of Chancellor George Osborne’s plan to raise over £30 billion over 2015-16 by selling off publicly-owned assets.

In a statement, he said proceeds from sales have now totalled over 24 billion pounds since April 1:

“We are now clear that taxpayers will get back more money from Northern Rock than they were forced to put in during the financial crisis.

“The highly competitive process, unprecedented scale, and the fact that these mortgages have been sold for almost £300m more than their book value demonstrates the confidence investors have in the UK.”

Cerberus was the winning bidder in a competitive bidding process, believed to have included offers from JPMorgan and Blackstone.

13/11/2015