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Wasn\’t the Co Op Bank run well then?

Holders of £370m of permanent interest bearing shares (PIBS) issued by the Co-op and Britannia Building Society before its takeover are expected to have their coupons cancelled, making them effectively worthless.

About £60m of PIBS are held by members of the public, paying interest annually of between 5.5pc and 13.5pc a year. PIBS are typically owned by pensioners, attracted by the steady guaranteed income.

A nice example of why it\’s good to have shareholders. Because they take that first chunk of losses.

You may recall that Richard Murphy was spluttering into his tea at one point about how appalling it was that the Co Op board were not considered proper bankers by the authorities. Insisted that these were exactly the people we needed to find a new method of banking.

As it turns out they\’ve done a Fred Goodwin. Crippled the bank by buying another without doing proper due diligence into the losses hiding inside that second bank.

Ho hum.

4 thoughts on “Wasn\’t the Co Op Bank run well then?”

  1. I’m looking forward to the spin on this one. The Organgrad was hot for the Co-op along with our favourite underqualified tax campaigner.

    I suspect it will be along the lines of – communism run properly works perfectly-

  2. If they had packed the board with trade unionists, career politicians and other heroes of the Courageous State this would never have happened

  3. I recall there appeared to be a concerted campaign in the 1980s to get the mutual societies to de-mutualise…and thus realise their hidden profits for some group of deprived folk. Has anyone ever investigated all those campaigns? Was that another East European/greenie smokescreen?

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