Carpet bagging: to keep or not to keep?

HJC1972

I've de-bagged since the time when i had 20+ bulding society accounts, mainly from mergers etc.

I'm still sitting on the folllowing:

Brittania
Yorkshire
Hanley Economic.
Nationwide
Skipton
West Brom.

All of the above earning naught-point-!!!!!!-all percent interest apart from Nationwide and Skipton at 5.01% and 3.4% respectively.

Just wondering if it's worth holding the others even at the minimum £100 that I've currently got in them?

talexuser

Brittania has already merged with the CoOp so that is a complete waste of time, Skipton has already taken over 2 smaller societies with no payouts, West Brom only avoided a break up by luck a few years ago, obviously members would not have got anything.

I had all of these except the Hanley years ago and cashed all in except the Nationwide (because it is the biggest and my membership is before the charity deadline) years ago. All recent mergers have resulted in nothing for members, so my opinion is it is now a waste of time unless you really don't care about the £500 or so.

grey_gym_sock

presumably the 1s that have been taking over other building societies are themselves in relatively good financial health - viz. nationwide, yorkshire, skipton.

but windfalls seem pretty unlikely even for them.

Glen_Clark

They changed the rules years ago so the carpetbaggers need a much higher percentage of members to vote in favour of demutualisation. The number of members who would benefit from a windfall is continually falling (because new Members are excluded) which makes future profiting from carpetbagging about as likely as winning the lottery.

marathon_man_3

I am similarly sitting with small amounts in the following building societies:
Harpenden
Saffron
Teachers
West Brom
Darlington

For the crap interest I would currently be earning elsewhere on the £500, I am happy to keep the £100 or so in each for now.
I have also been a Nationwide member for well over 20 years through various accounts there.