July 2025 – A few of the members of this organisation were permitted to have their moment of mutuality on Friday 25th July at their AGM. Some members were allowed to “have your say” but in accordance with their customary very low standards of corporate governance the directors ensured that the AGM was online-only – no hybrid meeting any questions were carefully selected and some were carefully not answered. Those members who have no access to the internet were disenfranchised and no interaction was allowed between members. That’s mutuality – Nationwide style.
In 2006 membership stood at 6,000,000. Through takeovers, membership now stands at 17,000,000 but the period allowed for members to “have their say” has remained unchanged and attendance is further reduced by not having a hybrid meeting. Nationwide is the only building society to do this. That is the Nationwide’s directors’ style of mutuality.
In the small amount of time that the few members were permitted, questions were raised about the obscene amount of members money that the CEO, in particular, was taking £6.9 million/year. As is the custom the chair of the remuneration committee was wheeled out to give her usual pre-recorded speech to try and justify the 43% pay increase. She explained that to run a building society it is 38 times more difficult than for a chancellor to run the UK economy.
Questions were also raised about the infamous biased “Quick Vote”. These were quickly brushed aside as usual with a rubbish and insulting response.
The meeting was unfortunately affected by a technical problem that resulted in reverberation of speech so the proceedings were difficult to understand. However, that was of no consequence as the AGM is nothing more than just an irritation for the directors.
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