Scarborough & Skipton Building Societies Merging

RayWolfe

Oh! So cynical!
... and so right.

GeorgeHowell

apt wrote: »

Anyone expecting windfall payments is living in the past. In the past few years there has probably been too many deals on both the saving and mortgage side that were unsustainable. But in the medium term I fear the reverse - that both the banks and building societies will be highly concentrated and that there will be very little competition. It would have been better for customers and staff if HBOS were to be taken over by a solid continental bank or a large insurance company rather than the anti-competitive take-over by Lloyds.

Can't agree regarding a foreign bank. A lot of this country's problems are due to foreign ownership of key companies, such as utilities. They have no equity in the Uk as a nation and will rip us off and favour their own nationals at every turn. The main blame for letting this situation come about lies with Blair.

john_s_2

GeorgeHowell wrote: »

A lot of this country's problems are due to foreign ownership of key companies, such as utilities ... The main blame for letting this situation come about lies with Blair.

?!? Yeah, that flipping Blair eh? Privatising all the publicly owned utilities so that Jonny Foreigner could buy them.

RayWolfe

GeorgeHowell wrote: »

The main blame for letting this situation come about lies with Blair.

Some people have so much bias, that they just cannot see the obvious. Sad really, 'cause he did some daft things, but actually, not this one!

jack_spratt_2

Milarky wrote: »

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 change

What is there to vote on !! Scarborough felt it could not survive in its present format ??
What do you do !! let the building society go under just to satisfy the people who wanted a vote on it .
Just use common sense !! what is more important to allow members to vote on a merger between two like minded building societies or to make sure that your money is financially secure

cheggers

No windfall I am gutted

At least I have a £100 to bank elsewhere now, as I am member of both Skipton & Scarb.

What about Leeds & Holbeck (or is it just Leeds these days) jumping on board as well and making a mega merger.

How mad in recent weeks we have had:

Derbyshire & Cheshire go to Nationwide
Barnsley go to Yorkshire
and now Scarborough go to Skipton.

Many years of carpetbagging down the pan

PremierFella_2

I'm thankful for small mercies.

At least this tie-up (Skipton takeover) doesn't involve the Nationwide, and there is sense in rationalising the branches to increase efficiencies (assuming that the branches that are kept in these handful of towns fully meet customer needs).

I'm getting mightily fed up though hearing that smaller building societies are financially sound one minute but suddenly a couple of months later in a position where they can't ride out a recession that has been in the offing for some time. Building society Boards are paid reasonably well and some of them have clearly been sleeping on the job.

baby_boomer

jack_spratt wrote: »

Just use common sense !! what is more important to allow members to vote on a merger between two like minded building societies or to make sure that your money is financially secure

They're not like minded and Skipton members' position is being undermined by being forced to absord such a society at the end of an FSA gun barrel.

It makes our money at Skipton less secure .

PremierFella wrote: »

I'm thankful for small mercies.

At least this tie-up (Skipton takeover) doesn't involve the Nationwide

Skipton members should wish it did .

Mutuality is not about "bending the knee", without member approval, every time a government agency asks your bosses to take a failed financial institution off the state's & taxpayers' hands

Building societies should not be dustbins for someone else's toxic mortgages.

jack_spratt_2

Through out history this is always how building societies have acted !! if a building society gets into difficulty another comes in to the rescue !!
There is no benefit to the building societies to let one go belly up

HankMcSpank

I think it suprememly ironic...mutuals are supposed to serve their members. In truth all they've done is serve their directors & (to a lesser extent) their staff.

The society traditional model of taking in high st deposits, & lending them out to borrowers at minimal profit has long been outdated. These so called mutuals have been taking excessive risk...if it comes off, the directors benefit, if it doesn't (as with the Scarborough), then no worries...not much downside (ie no risk of being held up to account).

It really sticks in my throat when I see slogans such as "mutuality - working for you" ....nothing could be further from the truth. it ought to be "mutuality...we fool you into believing we're working for you, but we're actually riding a might fine gravy train"