Professor Alan Ahearne:

There was no scope for burden-sharing while the guarantee was in place, so this was forward-looking. I mean, I discussed this with a senior civil servant maybe from May onwards about the Anglo bonds, could they be discounted. At the time the plan with Anglo was to split it into a good bank-bad bank, and that raises the issue of what goes into the bad bank, what creditors, what funding goes in. You put the subordinated debt in of course, and that would expose it then, but you, in theory, could put the senior bonds in. Now you are splitting the depositors and senior bonds then so that had all those legal issues but at least that was, in principle, we discussed that.