Its nice to know they are giving away the money they got from the government.

My Dad was a senior police officer and he had a rather cynical opinion of those in positions of authority,

He would tell me as a kid in Edinburgh "that when a thing happens that patently SHOULD NOT HAPPEN money or other benefits are changing hands' under the table' "

I wonder who really is getting the benefit here. Who is the biggest shareholder? Who will the biggest beneficiaries be? Do they have any hand in the decision to pay the increased dividend? (also I'd like to know their wives' shareholdings too)

Colour me suspicious please.

#! ther is no "government money" only taxpayer's money

There should be no dividend to shareholders who got their dividend when NR was demutualised. If the BoE saw fit to prop up NR for the common good then that is where the money should stay.

Putners have received cheap mortgages others pay for the stability of their lenders. In the days of building societies it was a mutual society in which the money of a large number of savers was lent to a smaller number of borrowers. The NR model is from a different and much more riskt world and as a taxpayer i do not like my money supporting it. However if the support allows the loans to be paid off in the normal way then i suppost that the cost to me is only what my billions coould have been doing a bit earlier than will now be possible

Dividends, unlike interest payments, are always optional for the company when paid on ordinary shares. It does seem odd to me that an already severly distressed company would look to raise it's stock yield even higher - 14p on a 150p stock is ridiculously high. Seems to me like a shareholder bribe - backed by the taxpayer.

WRT Northern Rocks largest shareholder. According to FT Sept 18th it was
Lloyds TSB and Scottish asset management company Baillie Gifford that are the two biggest shareholders but they reduced their holdings.

#1 Suck, by us the taxpayer you mean. Not the, so called, government.

Unflippinbelieveable , talk about getting your pound of flesh !

I wonder if board room bonuses are linked to dividends.

The place is well named Northern Rock because that`s surely where this bunch of banannas are heading.

Sack all the senior management and auction the company to the highest bidder,time to stop rewarding failure.

#11: Toast: Interesting. Legally outrageous of course.

NR is not using our money you numpties it is a solvent company trading on the stock market like any other.
It is paying the announced dividend if it didn't it would further reduce it's ability to continue trading and then the governemnt loan (your money) would be required.
Get real!

GP (13): "NR is not using our money you numpties it is a solvent company trading on the stock market like any other."

It's still technically solvent, due to the Bank's emergency credit-line, but it really isn't like any other company trading: it's the only bank whose depositor liabilities have been effectively nationalised; it's the only bank that has seen some £2 billion withdrawn in the last 10 days; and it's the only bank that would have defaulted on its wholesale loans without the Bank of England's credit-line/ Paying a dividend is a very surprising decision, since (i) it's not legally required, and (ii) it will anger the Treasury and the Bank. It's almost as if NR has begun to engage in brinksmanship with the Treasury.

14# wrong again.
It is behaving exactly as a tradin comopany would and should otherwise what is left of it would implode and let's be honest here if it were not for folk like you making things worse no one would have been any the wiser and no run on th bank would ahve occurred no drop in share value and dividend paid as normal.
I still think there is a major bank in difficulty and it's not NR they are not major. I see one of the major banks has reduced or is reducing creit limits this strikes me as a sign of worry within this one and this may be the one with a real exposure to the US crisis and may actually be in greater trouble than NR.