Nationwide are selling to Legal and General

Robert_Sterling

Nationwide B S are selling part of the business to Legal & General probably in September 2007.

ManAtHome

Not their core businesses though - main bit going is unit trust management (so no mass carpetbagging...)

Mr_Mumble

I loved the way that the Nationwide press release didn't even mention they were selling anything to a wicked PLC until the third paragraph. Instead deciding to concentrate on the "strategic distribution agreement" which happened to be a consequence of the sale. Oddly enough the wire reports from Reuters, Bloomberg, AFX et al mentioned the sale first and "strategic distribution agreement" sometime afterwards.

Are Nationwide members going to be happy with the hard sell of L&G products in branches?

£285m could mean a windfall of more than £25 for every member, of course that would be a waste. Far better to spend it on fat cat salaries, the luxurious pension scheme, sponsorship of even more hopeless English sports teams and the marketing of non-existant member benefits!

dunstonh

L&G products are sold by a number of other banks and the products sold are more expensive and cut down versions of the IFA product. We arent talking a little bit more expensive. We are talking upto 40% more expensive and thats without discounting.

Nationwide werent cheap before and could be beaten easily by IFAs without any discounted needed but L&G tied products are more expensive still.

The addition of external funds within their contracts will be attractive to many loyal Nationwide customers but they will be paying over the odds for it. Plus the tied agents cant give proper investment portfolio advice so that probably means more single fund investing in whatever has best performance in the last x number of years.

So, better products but at greater cost to the consumer who is foolish enough to use a bank for financial advice. Good for Nationwide too as they will make a mint out of it.

Ian_W

Mr_Mumble wrote:

£285m could mean a windfall of more than £25 for every member, of course that would be a waste. Far better to spend it on fat cat salaries, the luxurious pension scheme, sponsorship of even more hopeless English sports teams and the marketing of non-existant member benefits!

See you're a big fan of Nationwide ... :rotfl:

Pays to be different, too!

Milarky

Mutual 'ownership' is a myth - it's ownership without control - a sort of 'Power of Attorney' business model. Unlike a listed company they think (and largely) they can get away with unaccountable decisions - like the Portman 'merger'/takeover with no say by Nationwide customers. This latest sum goes some way to cover that acquisition (about £400m) does it not? Portman are paying out their 'own' money before it becomes Nationwide's and then their depleted reserves are to be 'added' (if that's the right word to use) to Nationwide's...

Nationwide wants to create the 'largest ever' merger but (because Portman is less than 20% the size of Nationwide) the FSA (who else!) has allowed them to do so without a ballot. Hmm, now Portman was number three was it not? That means that NW could take each one of these smaller societies in tow until they were all in and would never need to ask the permission of its own members - neat trick that.