Northern Rock Bank Run

Date: September 14, 2007 • Location: Gosforth, United Kingdom

Late-2000s financial crisis: The Northern Rock bank received a liquidity support facility from the Bank of England, sparking a bank run—the United Kingdom's first in 150 years.

The 2008 financial crisis was a major worldwide financial crisis which started in the U.S. The first phase was the subprime mortgage crisis, which began in early 2007 as mortgage-backed securities (MBS) tied to U.S. real estate, and a vast web of derivatives linked to those MBS, collapsed in value. A liquidity crisis spread to global institutions by mid-2007 and climaxed with the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers in September 2008, which triggered a stock market crash and bank runs in several countries. The crisis exacerbated the Great Recession, a global recession that began in late 2007, and contributed to major crises in Iceland and the eurozone.