Goodbye Cooperative Bank, it was nice knowing you

My bank is in trouble, the great and noble Cooperative Bank has fallen foul of something or someone and turn itself from a mutual into yet another plc, floated on the stock exchange and only 30% controlled by the original owners. A sad day. I've read many stories and many stupid comments but how a US hedge fund managed to be the driving force behind this is beyond me.  A blame game has begun, was it the takeover of the struggling Britannia BS, or the attempts at buying over 600 branches of Lloyds Bank or , as many believe, something more sinister?  We will never know unless there is a major investigation by the financial authorities (which I doubt will happen). As a mutual, Cooperative Bank, had to put customers first, this didn't always work but it certainly won't now. How can company directors at a plc put their shareholders 2nd, or 3rd. This won't work. What puzzles me more is they believe their own lies.  I received an email (as all customers did) from Euan Sutherland early in the summer and I decided to write to him/them for clarification and expressed my concerns about their reported financial status. I was written to in August and told not to worry, nothing would change. Here we are in October with a fundamental change in the Banks ownership structure.

The Companies Act 2006 details the role of a company, the obligation to shareholders etc. Unless Cooperative is saying it will give its members (current customers/account holders) the same status as its new shareholders then we are being side-lined for corporate shareholders, hedge funds and other institutions who will care little or nothing about the our accounts. Nationalisation would have been preferable to this.

October 23, 2013