Building Society Mergers / takeovers possible windfalls

talexuser

planteria wrote: »

Leeds & Holbeck is now just Leeds: it hasn't merged with any other society or been taken over.

Sigh! I've already conceded that there is a microscopically small chance that at some time in the very far future you might just get a few quid from the Leeds within any of our lifetimes, but the Leeds DID merge with the Mercantile Building Soc in 2006, so there is no chance whatever that your statement above was true.

planteria

Leeds Building Society is independent and so you were wrong to group it with Britannia (taken over by Co-op Bank) and Chelsea (now part of Yorkshire Building Society). sorry if that makes you sigh:laugh:

that Leeds absorbed Mercantile in 2006 is a fact, so there was a 'merger', congratulations about that, but it is irrelevant.

i hope all is clear Gazz12. for now, i shall hold onto my Leeds Building Society passbook, along with those from Skipton, Nottingham, Market Harborough, Nationwide, Coventry, Yorkshire and West Bromwich that you mention.

i suspect that any mergers of Building Societies in the next few months will not produce windfalls, but that things will change in the future, and that there will be mergers amongst other mutuals fairly soon...how this affects members will be interesting to see.

talexuser

planteria wrote: »

that Leeds absorbed Mercantile in 2006 is a fact, so there was a 'merger', congratulations about that, but it is irrelevant.

Not irrelevant when you wrote Leeds "hasn't merged with any other society". Glad you've finally recognised where clearly you were wrong.

planteria

you advised the enquirer incorrectly. i didn't. keep sighing.

talexuser

Actually your advice on mergers was incorrect

planteria

no, it wasn't.

talexuser

According to your original post the Leeds has never merged with anyone else... I wonder why I got that £100 from the Mercantile?

I'll stand by chances of future windfalls from Building Socs are so miniscule in a) happening at all and b) anywhere near the returns from the glory days that the probability is negligible to the point of insignificance. Time (a l-o-n-g, l-o-n-g time) will tell.

planteria

congratulations on your £100.
stand by what you want, and you may well be right, but i'm still hanging on for now, and "Leeds Building Society is independent and so you were wrong to group it with Britannia (taken over by Co-op Bank) and Chelsea (now part of Yorkshire Building Society)"...and "Leeds Building Society is still, potentially, the source of a possible windfall"

talexuser

I think at one stage I had 22 or 23 building soc accounts, so probably got all the windfalls going, including the shares. Unfortunately hanging on to Northern Rock resulted in a total loss, which I often wondered if wiped out all the gains since did not keep totals of all the windfalls over that time. Selling the Bradford & Bingley, Halifax, Alliance & Leicester and Bristol & West in time probably was in the black overall. I closed the remainder a couple of years after the crash, keeping only the Nationwide for some savings and the pre-"sign away rights" membership (if that even still means anything) and the National Counties, it having a very valuable property book for its size.

planteria

i am a member of most of the Building Societies in the UK...and a couple of Jamaican ones.

interesting that you kept 'the two Nats'..i opened an account with NCBS last week and am 'benefitting' from 1.75% in Nationwide's Loyalty Saver nowadays.

if all of your Bradford & Bingley, Halifax, Alliance & Leicester, Bristol & West and Northern Rock shares were 'windfall' shares...then even if you wound up with nothing from Northern Rock you have to have been up, don't you?