carpetbagging is it still worth it

susanann_2

I still have a number of accounts from the days carpetbagging was successful. I have £100 in each of the following.

Monmouthshire Building Society x 2 Husband has one as well
Brittania Building Society
Principality Building Society
Nationwide Building Society x 2 Husband has one as well
Yorkshire Building Society
Stroud & Swindon Building Society.

It would be just my luck to close them and there would be a payout. What have others done with theirs?

JonnyBravo

Closed mine.
After the success rate of the previous conversions any more are very unlikely in the foreseeable future IMO.
A few of those you have are further protected anyhow
eg Nationwide instituted a requirement new members sign away their rights to any windfall, meaning as time passes there would be fewer and fewer who would vote in favour. Brittania have merged with co-op etc

DavidHayton

Hi Susanann,

I think that you will be waiting in vain. Most people would say that the liklihood of a payout is tiny or non-existent.

In recent times, building socirty business have appeared to be liabilities rather than assets (e.g., Derbyshire, Dunfermline, etc)

I finally gave up hope when the members of the Kent Reliance Building Society practically gave their society away to JC Flowers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_Reliance_Building_Society#Transfer_to_OneSavings
They did exactly as the directors told them to, despite there being no payout.

The only possible exception (I think) is the Nationwide which might have some value to a new entrant to the UK banking market. However, it would need a complete U-turn by the directors and also a way around their charity sign-away clause which has now been in place for ten years. The chances of all this are very small.

David

agrinnall

Assuming your Nationwide accounts pre-date the introduction of the charity clause then it may be worth hanging on just in case (the benefits that a mutual is supposed to bring to members seem to be few and far between these days so members may eventually get fed up and agree to demutualise) but I don't think there's much chance with the others.

jimjames

Simple answer - no!

None of the BS mergers or takeovers recently have resulted in any payout for members.

susanann_2

I may keep my nationwide ones just in case then, as they are before the charity clause came in. I thought i read something about Yorkshire merging.

kevin52

I got shares in Bradford & Bingley and Halifax, and a fat lot of good that did me.:(

jimjames

kevin52 wrote: »

I got shares in Bradford & Bingley and Halifax, and a fat lot of good that did me.:(

So did I along with A&L. I sold after 6 months and moved the funds into UK & Europe unit trusts which have done reasonably well. Hence my advice elsewhere to not hold a single company shares, if I'd kept them I would have lost most of that windfall.

sabretoothtigger

It wasnt clear at the time that a BS turned bank would be extreme high risk. All I read was they might get taken over, which usually means the price goes up not down

It is best to spread out though.

I sold my Bristol & west shares and also Bradford to buy a FTSE tracker (crap but not terrible) and also got Standard life who are another mutual but insurance not BS.


SL went sideways for years, but they do pay nice dividends and are very solid mostly because they got beaten in a bidding war meaning they kept their money.
This also happened with RBS and Barclays, Barc lost and we know they were dam lucky they did


People froze in the headlights when given shares and got splatted. Most people should just buy ftse trackers, might be bad sometimes but losing it all is unlikely


B&W Were they pref shares, cant remember?

Thrugelmir

Stroud & Swindon is now part of the Coventry BS.

p00hsticks

Britannia has now merged with the Co-op.