is there any chance of Building Society windfalls ever again?

talexuser

18cc wrote: »

Greedy account holders aka carpetbaggers.

Yep, it was all my fault. The directors had nothing to do with it.

Voyager2002

gardner1 wrote: »

But when we greedy account holders were offered £1500 plus.......what would you do
In the plain light of day what was offered would take a very long time to make in interest so in my case it was a no brainer....take the cash or shares and move on to the next one.
I just wish at the time i had more money to open more accounts as i missed a few which had high account balance limits but got most of the juicy windfalls

Well, I was an account holder at the time and voted against demutualisation. When it was obvious what was happening I decided not to open accounts with other mutuals under threat because I thought that the whole thing was immoral...

Fairly soon after the whole fiasco I was stranded abroad because my then bank, Abbey National, messed up on paying a credit card bill. That was when I began to pay the price for what had happened to this sector... over the last couple of weeks I have wasted hours on the phone trying to resolve minor issues with banks, and feel that I am continuing to pay the price for your holidays. I suggest that what the average customer has lost in terms of quality of banking services is vastly greater than minor cash handouts that a few carpet-baggers managed to trouser. Obviously the directors and senior managers were the ones who gained the most.

gardner1

Voyager2002 wrote: »

Well, I was an account holder at the time and voted against demutualisation. When it was obvious what was happening I decided not to open accounts with other mutuals under threat because I thought that the whole thing was immoral...

Fairly soon after the whole fiasco I was stranded abroad because my then bank, Abbey National, messed up on paying a credit card bill. That was when I began to pay the price for what had happened to this sector... over the last couple of weeks I have wasted hours on the phone trying to resolve minor issues with banks, and feel that I am continuing to pay the price for your holidays. I suggest that what the average customer has lost in terms of quality of banking services is vastly greater than minor cash handouts that a few carpet-baggers managed to trouser. Obviously the directors and senior managers were the ones who gained the most.

I think most people would expect a hell of a lot of customer service to make up for £1000-£1500......and if you think the directors of said societies wouldn't have p155ed the reserves up the wall your deluded

Newnoel

What about the smaller ones, something like the Harpenden BS? Surely these tiddlers cant survive on thier own and will eventually be bought out?

Zanderman

Newnoel wrote: »

What about the smaller ones, something like the Harpenden BS? Surely these tiddlers cant survive on thier own and will eventually be bought out?

Why do you think they can't survive? They have so far. Many seem to be doing fine.

They can't be 'bought out' unless the members vote for it.

And for those which have put in constitutional clauses preventing windfalls on demutualisation there would be no advantage for members - unless they were members before that clause was brought in.

Rich2808

I think the last windfall was in 2008 when the small Catholic building society - which only had one branch in Westminster - was taken over by the Chelsea BS. Qualifying members got £400+.

But within a year the Chelsea had been taken over by the Yorkshire BS - but Chelsea members got no windfall.

The old Catholic branch is now an Italian restaurant - so the building has still maintained its links to Rome!

I doubt we will ever see them again - the big payouts go to the Directors not the members these days. But many of the local societies have survived for a century and more - and like credit unions there is still a local market for them.

Froggitt

PeacefulWaters wrote: »

How successful were the building societies that became banks?

Northern Rock
HBOS
Alliance & Leicester
Bradford and Bingley

Ah, they all went bust. I wouldn't expect it to ever happen again.

Bank of Scotland, Royal Bank of Scotland, Natwest, Lloyds were all banks that almost went bust and had to be bailed. It was the strategy they followed, combined with a global downturn, that did for the converted building societies, not the fact that they converted into banks.

Froggitt

Lorian wrote: »

Makes me wonder what happened to Ord.

Probably showing my age.

Haven't seen him or any of the other members of the inner circle (which brought together the various factions) for maybe twenty years now. We used to meet up in London every few months to plan our next campaigns, we'd go to AGMs (Nationwide was a popular one), and go for a beer or two afterwards.....North Audley Street rings a bell.

From memory, a demutualisation motion at Nationwide failed by just a few votes, was closer than Brexit percentages.

All got very serious when The Porkmen sued an individual for defamation (?).

I closed all my bagging accounts years ago, and still have a large pile of passbooks which "paid out". It really wasn't hard in the early days to sign up to ten or twenty societies in a few days.....town like Watford and Harrow you could collect a bunch of forms one day, fill them in overnight, and return next day with a £100 cheque with each one.....for me, missus, two kids. One of my best investments, despite a couple of them going down the swannee due to not cashing out early enough......there was even a Carpetbaggers PEP into which you could put your demutualised shares!

A_T

I'm still ashamed of myself for taking Halifax's thirty pieces of silver.