Mr. Richie Boucher:

I think there was a belief in the markets at that time. We were not an outlier, is that securitisation markets were an ability to grow assets outside your natural home territories ... we didn't have a natural deposit base. Securitisation was seen to be a very appropriate and good model. I think we grew ... my personal belief Deputy and there would be a number... my personal belief is the single biggest mistake we made as a bank was to grow our UK mortgage business without a natural deposit base. To grow it in securitisations and there is a particular feature.

Sterling is a natural short currency, so it is not a currency that there is ... big volumes. So, as it transpired and as it became apparent, the sterling securitisation was really being financed by the dollar markets, in particular by US mutual funds. So, when you had the crisis developing, the US mutual funds started to pull back very quickly and the sterling securitisation markets locked down very quickly and we were badly exposed. So that reliance on securitisation, notwithstanding that a lot of people were doing it ... it seemed to be a new business model. It strayed too far away from traditional banking where you must finance your asset base by natural customer deposits, so it was a bad mistake.