Coventry BS bids for the Co-op Bank

gt94sss2 · 6 December 2023 at 3:00PM

One of Britain's biggest building societies has tabled a surprise takeover bid for the Co-operative Bank – a deal that would effectively remutualise one of the country's most recognisable high street lenders.

https://news.sky.com/story/coventry-building-society-tables-bid-to-remutualise-co-operative-bank-13024020

boingy · 6 December 2023 at 3:52PM

Wow! That's come out of the blue. Co-op are in desperate need of improvement. It will be interesting to see whether Coventry can achieve that.

MikeJXE · 6 December 2023 at 4:23PM

boingy said:

Wow! That's come out of the blue. Co-op are in desperate need of improvement. It will be interesting to see whether Coventry can achieve that.

Yeah wow

I have both Coventry and Co-op accounts so how would this news affect them ?

km1500 · 6 December 2023 at 4:35PM

wonder if Coventry is planning to go back into the current account business !

wmb194 · 6 December 2023 at 4:46PM

It must be going cheap if a building society is interested. I wonder what the branch overlap is?

MikeJXE · 6 December 2023 at 4:48PM

Can't wait till Coventry/Co-op launch a switch so I can dump Barclays

wmb194 · 6 December 2023 at 4:50PM

MikeJXE said:

boingy said:

Wow! That's come out of the blue. Co-op are in desperate need of improvement. It will be interesting to see whether Coventry can achieve that.

Yeah wow

I have both Coventry and Co-op accounts so how would this news affect them ?

IT integration projects in the banking sector are famously expensive and prone to failure. I wouldn't be surprised if it played it safe and 'did a Virgin Money' i.e. it could rebrand Co-op as Coventry but continue to run separate systems with separate logins.