Ross Vies With Flowers in Bet U.K Housing Bottomed: Mortgages

U.S. private-equity investors Wilbur Ross and J. Christopher Flowers, who’ve made billions of dollars turning around industries from steel mills to Japanese banks, are lining up to finance British homebuyers as the country’s biggest banks pull back.

Five years after mortgage lender Northern Rock Plc collapsed, loan approvals are about half what they were in the boom decade that ended in 2007 and the government is pressing for more competition. Even Tesco Plc, the nation’s biggest retailer, is stepping in to help fill a funding gap spawned by the global credit crisis and reduced bank lending as the housing market shows signs of improvement after nine months of declines, according to Hometrack Ltd. data this week.