There are Building Society Fat Cat Directors who help themselves to lots of your money then describe members as greedy and there were Carpetbaggers who tried to copy Fat Cat Directors and they failed.
No building society ever disappeared through the actions of a member. All conversions and takeovers have been the result of fat cat directors’ actions. But fat cats used the suggestion of carpetbaggers as an excuse to reduce the legal rights of members even further.
Directors continue to seek the erosion of members’ rights. They use your money to obtain legal advice in an endeavor to stop members from standing in elections and they use your money to produce biased voting documents to stop members from gaining seats on the board, to stop members’ resolutions from gaining support and to push through resolutions that disadvantage members. Nevertheless it is possible to stand and get elected and we support any suitable member who seeks to be elected or to submit a resolution on the principle of mutuality .
Building society directors prefer to appoint “pals” before or immediately after an election. They then stand, as “existing directors”, for proper election at AGM time. Sometimes a touch of amnesia in the boardroom causes a director, who has never been elected, to be described as standing for “re-election”.
Year 2000 outgoing BSA chairman David Smith (Chief Executive Dunfermline B.S.) was reported as departing with a scathing criticism of some members “these small groups of individuals motivated by greed”. The pay ceiling for all part-time directors at the Nationwide Building Society is £600,000 Per Year! For twelve days work per year that is £50,000 per day! So who are the greedy ones?
Mutuality does not extend beyond the walls of the boardroom.
www.bsma.org.uk