The Global Financial Crisis 10 Years On – Lest We Forget

9 August marked the 10th anniversary of the start of the Global Financial Crisis, which was triggered by the sub-prime mortgage events in the US which caused liquidity to seemingly evaporate from the financial system.

A domino effect of events then occurred, starting with French bank, BNP Paribas, freezing funds which were exposed to those US sub-prime mortgages. Banks stopped lending to each other, the financial system seized up and six weeks later, the first run on a UK bank in more than 100 years happened, resulting in the end of Northern Rock. Next came the failure of several other national banks who required government bailouts.

A year later in 2008, the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the largest bankruptcy filing in US history, caused global markets to collapse - AKA the Credit Crunch. The EU debt crisis arose in 2009 as several EU member states were unable to repay their government debt. The consequences of these events combined created the most devastating