(Reuters) - Northern Rock was nationalised on Sunday after the government said offers for the troubled lender were not good enough.

The following are some facts on the bank.

* Northern Rock was formed in 1965 as a merger of the Northern Counties Permanent Building Society, established back in 1850, and Rock Building Society.

By the time it scrapped its building society status and listed in 1997, it was an amalgamation of 53 societies.

* Based in Newcastle, Northern Rock is the country's fifth largest mortgage lender, accounting for one in 13 home loans.

* The bank has just 76 branches and employs just over 6,000 staff.

* Before the run on the bank in September, it had around 1.4 million savers, some 800,000 mortgage customers and assets totalling 113.5 billion pounds.

* It was the first run on a bank for more than 140 years and the bank is the first to be nationalised since the 1970s.

* The government has loaned Northern Rock around 25 billion pounds to prop it up.