Britania merger vote

weezie_2

I'm a member of both Britania & the Co-op & got my voting papers through from Britania yesterday.
Having read both of the previous threads from when the merger was announced:
Britannia/Co-op - to become the super BS?,
Britannia and Co-op may merge in April, plus the docs supplied by Britania, I'm still none the wiser about the benefits of the merger.
If all else is equal, I think it's better to have diversity in the market & favour small companies / mutuals over larger ones. There doesn't seem to be any clear benefit of the merger, other than a vague "if we're bigger, we'll be better & stronger".
Can anyone shed any light?

cvd

Two questions for you to consider:

1. The Britannia has not been run well in recent years. Will this merger lead to an improvement?

2. Does any building society have a future? There are some comments on that question here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/douglasfraser/2009/03/building_up_tearing_down.html

pizzagirl

weezie wrote: »

I'm a member of both Britania & the Co-op & got my voting papers through from Britania yesterday.
Having read both of the previous threads from when the merger was announced:
Britannia/Co-op - to become the super BS?,
Britannia and Co-op may merge in April, plus the docs supplied by Britania, I'm still none the wiser about the benefits of the merger.
If all else is equal, I think it's better to have diversity in the market & favour small companies / mutuals over larger ones. There doesn't seem to be any clear benefit of the merger, other than a vague "if we're bigger, we'll be better & stronger".
Can anyone shed any light?

Don't get too worked up about it. These votes are always passed with at least a 90% majority so there's little point in worrying too much about the intricacies of the proposals.

lolarentt

I chucked mine in the recycling bin!

bristolleedsfan

weezie wrote: »

I'm still none the wiser about the benefits of the merger.
Can anyone shed any light?

If someone wanted CO-OP membership with the alleged benefits that Britannia are stating that brings then they could have joined the CO-OP anyway, personally I believe that loss of shareholding rights in the society should have been bought out so I voted NO, I might be in the minority better than merely following like apparent Sheep.

castle96

quite right bristolleedsfan, I want paying for my vote !

premierfella

weezie wrote: »

There doesn't seem to be any clear benefit of the merger, other than a vague "if we're bigger, we'll be better & stronger".
Can anyone shed any light?

There is no clear benefit in this case other than efficiencies - if that is the perceived benefit all "non-local" building societies may as well merge and become "SuperNationwide Building Society", explaining what has taken them so long.

I'm already a Co-Op member, so have voted no (for what it is worth).

Milarky

Just voted 'against' also. Come on, let's see if we can scrape even 100 votes opposed to Co-op's opportunistic takeover.

(Also, don't forget to vote against re-election of directors while you are about it...)

martinman3

Both votes in our household will be no.
My logic is this, if Britannia needs the merger because of bad management then why make Neville Richardson the CEO of the new bank ?

My gut feeling is that it is all because he wants to be CEO of a large organisation with the pension benefits/bonuses that go with it. The Member Reward scheme is even set up to resemble share dividends and don't forget that it was Britannia which succeeded in changing the rules about the minimum funding for lending from depositors for building societies so that they could take more advantage of the money markets.

The benefits for members, you save £1 for joining the Co-op.

Eilagoss

I have seen an article recently stating that in the case of the Britannia Merger there is no minimum No. of people required to vote for the merger to pass. This means if the vast percentage of people, let the chairman decide, or don't bother returning their voting forms, the merger may go through with only a handful of people actually saying they want it.
I am guilty of frequently allowing others decide what's best when there is an AGM or similar vote (working on the theory that there others out there who know more about it than me, especially the larger share holders etc).
I personally haven't seen a good reason to vote for the merger, but after doing a bit of trawling it seems it may have to do with the bad mortgage payers? Being a member of both the Britannia and the Co-op (in my opinion an excellent bank) I still haven't made up my mind. Woth thinking about before putting the paperwork in the recycling though!

baby_boomer

Basically a yes vote will deprive you of many of your existing membership rights - e.g. voting for directors and future rule changes or having a say on directors' remuneration.

The Co-op dividend is far smaller than the Britannia Members' Reward. Which one do you suppose they will copy?

A definite beneficiary will be Neville Richardson, Britannia's boss, who will run the combined operation on an increased salary.

As for the benefits of being part of a super-mutual, Neville Richardson and the entire Britannia board said it was a bad idea when it was last proposed at Britannia by an outside director candidate. They ran a campaign against it.

Out of that experience came the current "Quick Vote" ballot paper which is an affront to democracy.