Leading shareholders in Bradford & Bingley (B&B) are considering calling on Rod Kent, the chairman, and other senior executives to resign in the wake of the embattled mortgage lender's botched £400 million rights issue plan and a shock profits warning.

“It is something we will be looking at very closely. The chief executive Steven Crawshaw has already stepped down; the question is whether more are needed,” one big shareholder said.

Some of the bank's largest investors told The Times that they would press the board on whether senior directors should step down during a series of planned meetings in the coming days.

The Association of British Insurers has strengthened its opposition to the sale of a 23 per cent stake in B&B to TPG, the American private equity firm.

B&B stunned the City last week when it tore up plans to raise £400million from existing investors and said that it would sell the stake to TPG for £179 million.

The rights issue was cut to £258 million and the price dropped to 55p. TPG has the right to install two directors on the board and has ensured that its stake cannot be diluted.

Peter Montagnon, director of investment affairs at the ABI, said: “The anti-dilution arrangements create a division between TPG compared with other shareholders in the same class, which are at a disadvantage. This conflicts with fundamental principles.”

Neil Dwane, the chief investment officer for Europe of RCM, B&B's 11th-largest shareholder, said: “I find it staggering that, having got the issue underwritten the first time, they had not done enough due diligence to discover that there was a material adverse condition and had to issue the profits warning.”

A B&B spokesman said that the board accepted that the rights issue process had not been ideal, but said that B&B had feared a possible run on the bank if it had issued the profits warning without having TPG in place.

Halifax move

Halifax, Britain’s biggest mortgage lender, is planning to reduce the cost of its best tracker deals for borrowers who can put down deposits of at least 40 per cent.

Two and three-year tracker deals, with a starting rate of 5.99 per cent, are part of a wider revamp of Halifax’s mortgage range and will move to alienate first time buyers further. A note sent to mortgage brokers, and seen by The Times, showed it will be introducing two and three-year tracker deals at 0.99 percentage points over base rate, currently 5 per cent.

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