Scarborough & Skipton Building Societies Merging

qamwc1

What a cynical lot you are. The likes of the FSA have more on the plate than the spend time engineering building society mergers. 59 societies is nothing compared to the number of banks on their books.

http://www.fsa.gov.uk/pubs/list_banks/2008/sep08.pdf

Building societies have always "failed" (not allowed to fail or even titter on the edge for fear of tarnishing the industry's good name) - many disappeared at the last housing downturn. We haven't seen the building societies losses from the current downturn yet - the societies need to get together to build up their capital (what is known as their Free Capital). Also, the talent pool for running building societies is shrinking - the small ones are not exciting and the remuneration packages are equally not exciting.

If we want are building societies to be solid institutions then we have to accept that they will only lend at lower loan to value, at higher interest rates, not indulge in unsecured lending etc. and pay lower rates on their savings accounts.

Milarky

Ivan_Konstantinov wrote: »

hi is my Market Harborough Building Society safe>?thanks

Safe from what? The money's safe upto £50K as they belong the FSCS and pay the levy like everyone else. Safe from a questionnable shotgun marriage with no compensation for that* - I doubt it.

*if it could be proven there was no money or value in the transaction, fine, but this deliberate denial of membership rights by the financial authorities shows that we are becoming more like Putin's Russia by the day - there is no accoutability anymore

[BTW has the FSA told anyone where to go for the Derbyshire confirmation meeting yet?]

baby_boomer

bristolleedsfan wrote: »

"Beverley's chief executive, Phil Gray, said he is very confident about the society's future and said he couldn't see Beverley taking part in future consolidation. "We are 100 per cent retail funding and we've been that way for the past four years. We have no wholesale funding. We are comfortable about where we are." :think:

There is no point to the Beverley BS.

For those not already acquainted with this charming East Yorks Cathedral city, the cramped, old fashioned, solitary Beverley branch is within a stone's throw of a spacious and modern Yorkshire BS retail outlet.

Think of the recapitalisation, to help YBS pay for its expensive errors on American mortgage vehicles, on a £0 Beverley takeover .

baby_boomer

Milarky wrote: »

[BTW has the FSA told anyone where to go for the Derbyshire confirmation meeting yet?]

Haven't you had the coded letter telling members to take out a subscription to the Chesterfield Weekly Examiner or some similar organ and await instructions :rolleyes:

Zebra

baby_boomer wrote: »

..............East Yorks Cathedral city..............

East Riding Minster town

HankMcSpank

baby_boomer wrote: »

Agreed.

As I posted on MSE on 11 October in the "Are BSs a safer bet thread"

"My main worry about the Scarborough is that it increased its mortgage book in the year to April 2008 by 57%.

Perhaps not the best time to have done this if they actually lent most of that money against the housing market at LTVs of more than 75%. It would also mean that many of their loans were at low rates, and that a substantial proportion of their borrowers haven't yet had the experience of forking out at the Standard Variable Rate while fighting rising fuel & utility bills.

Good call, but I posted this in the same thread before you ....

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

My main worries about the Scarborough...

The Yorkshire based building socities/banks seem to be in the thick of it (think Bradford & Bingley, Halifax...or a bit further north ....Northern Rock)

New builds in the Yorkshire area have been twatted - that's *got* to affect their balance sheet. (in any falling property market the North comes of worst & that'll be where most of their business will be.)

they seemingly walk a fine line between being profitable & at a loss - last years accounts shows just a profit of 7.8 million - which I don't think is a lot for the 17th largest building society (& this is during the good times!)

They're a little too small for my liking.

There's almost no news flow from them whatsoever (I have access to some pretty specialist financial news databases....not a lot on there)....silence is not golden in these markets.

qamwc1

Milarky wrote: »

Safe from what? The money's safe upto £50K as they belong the FSCS and pay the levy like everyone else. Safe from a questionnable shotgun marriage with no compensation for that* - I doubt it.

*if it could be proven there was no money or value in the transaction, fine, but this deliberate denial of membership rights by the financial authorities shows that we are becoming more like Putin's Russia by the day - there is no accoutability anymore

[BTW has the FSA told anyone where to go for the Derbyshire confirmation meeting yet?]

These are mutual institutions - members of both become members of the enlarged society. The idea of a payout started when societies were allowed to convert to banks - which gave rise to carpetbaggers. Membership rights do not equal a financial stake in a society - some people have to close their accounts after many years with a society, they cannot demand a share of the society's reserves. Yet carpetbaggers expect the same share is a life long member.

Do you want to money safe at the least cost to the taxpayer or do you want to worry about some narrow notion of membership rights. The forerunners to the FSA organised many society mergers on the quiet - the point is the depositors have to retain confidence - we all know what happens otherwise.

jack_spratt_2

I believe in the mutual principle !! the societies are being kept mutual though just as one society .
To all the carpetbaggers you all seem very disappointed !! maybe the real reasons for investing with the smaller building societies are now coming out .
Maintaining the safety of our money is more important to me than getting any windfall
The only time i would expect a windfall is if a building society floats on the stock market clearly this is not happening with the recent mergers so i think there is no cause for complaint

Milarky

What's the point being in a 'mutual' if you don't get a vote on important decisions? The only excuse (the only one, really) is that by some secretive process - that makes the way MPs are selected for shoe-in safe seats seem ecstatcially democratic and transparent by comparison - we must have 'elected' all these bozos onto the boards to take the decision for us. And we must have secretly never intended that we be asked to decide because they've all got the message - to ask the FSA for a 'Section 43 (3)(b)' marriage certificate.

Of course these managers have always known that they didn't need to ask members at important times so I would be cynical to suggest that they just 'played us' with talk of 'members matter' in order to get their sinecures.

Show me a single Building society (Ecology, maybe?) where the Board ever actually considered what members thought, beyond the 'customer feedback' variety beloved of Nationwide for example or, God forbid! allowed a member to be elected as a (representative) director?

plus ça change

cvd

or, God forbid! allowed a member to be elected as a (representative) director?

I thought the Derbyshire had such a creature.
I am surprised more building societies do not have them - one person can have no real effect, but they would allow the societies to claim they are "really democratic". The one elected to the Derbyshire board clearly had no effect.

Of course, a building society which was really democratic would go bust in a no time at all.