£100 in 8 Building Societies............

bigheadxx

Folio wrote: »

As title says, I have had £100 in 8 different accounts (that is to say £100 in each account not spread across them all) I have been loathe to shut these accounts as I wanted to maintain membership of the societies. Am I doing the right thing or should I close the accounts andd pay a chunk off my mortgage?

You may not get a windfall anyway. I have some money with Britannia which is merging with another society and have already been told that there will be no windfall

withnell

bigheadxx wrote: »

You may not get a windfall anyway. I have some money with Britannia which is merging with another society and have already been told that there will be no windfall

Then vote against it! I see no benefits for the ordinary member, the main benefit is the increase in Salary for Neville and his friends!

Britannia pay poor enough rates as it is without going down to what the Co-op pay

Milarky

withnell wrote: »

Then vote against it! I see no benefits for the ordinary member, the main benefit is the increase in Salary for Neville and his friends!

Britannia pay poor enough rates as it is without going down to what the Co-op pay

As I've said before

It's not a 'done deal' - there's the small matter of the ballot of members

It's difficult to see what any Britannia member actually gains from doing what the management wants and agreeing to merge because they could go around the corner and join the Co-op themselves for £1 in advance of the ballot - and get exactly the same benefits.

As usual we won't be told what either management plans to do for our benefit before being asked to agree with this. Expect job losses in each organisation, but they're not going to tell us that!

Look at the Nationwide takeover of Portman, which Nationwide chiefs tried to justify to their own members (who did not receive any payment and weren't asked for their views either) ; the 'cash flow' of Portman's mortgage book was worth every penny of the £200 each that we weren't paying for it! Hmm with interest rates so low that cash flow's looking pretty 'peaky' now..

I really don't understand why the 'ubermutual' brigade here, who keep saying things like: "it's lovely to be mutual with no shareholders" don't see this for the Orwellian dystopia it is: you get all hanky-panky of casino capitalism (or at least the occasional go get 'em over promoted personalities) without the checks of share capital.

Another thing. If you have an account with a bank and happen to be a shareholder and you go to the annual meeting and upset the bosses, they can close your account (maybe?) but they can't take that 'membership' of the forum off you - because the shares remains yours until you decide to sell them. A few years ago some BS members had the temerity to suggest a ballot on demutualising. When that was defeated though the bosses took revenge by cancelling their accounts (and thus their membership of the forum)