Before the collapse of Northern Rock, when it was a beacon of ingenuity in a staid banking world, Adam Applegarth cut quite a dash in City circles. He was the young, fêted chief executive praised for turning a provincial Northern bank into a mortgage powerhouse. The photographs that emerged of him this week show an older, deflated figure. But let us not forget his six-figure payoff.

Clive Briault, the man who headed the Financial Services Authority division responsible for regulating banks, yesterday joined Mr Applegarth in losing his job over the Rock debacle.

Mr Briault is the first high-profile regulator to leave the FSA over Northern Rock’s near-collapse. His departure comes ahead of an internal report by the FSA’s auditor on the regulator’s dealings with Northern Rock in the run-up to its downfall.

Hector Sants, chief executive of the FSA, has already admitted that it had not conducted an in-depth check of Rock in the 18 months before its spectacular implosion. He no doubt hopes that offering Mr Briault up as a preemptive sacrifice will dampen the criticism that the report will attract.

It is welcome to see a regulator paying the ultimate price for the FSA’s failure to supervise its charges. But how high is the price, really? Mr Briault is believed to have received a £380,000 payoff to soften the blow of unemployment. And he is unlikely to be unemployed for long. City firms pay big money for former regulators who know their way around the arcane ways of the FSA – even ex-regulators tainted by a bank run.

Still, we should not be too harsh. The FSA shared the blame for the Rock debacle with the Bank of England and the Treasury and not a single head has rolled at either.

siobhan.kennedy@thetimes.co.uk

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