"Open Forum" is moving to the new "Opinion" section.

If you have an opinion you want to express about what's happened to our bank then please use the Opinion section.

You need to create a user login if you don't have one already.

Save Our Bank Team

Comments

I like many others have been shocked ay recent developments and ridiculously poor governance at our bank.

There's is still a lot to fight for, so please everyone lets stick together and make our discussions collectively and in the greater good. Whatever we do, lets have a united front and turn this around together. In unity there is strength!

All the best for Christmas and the new year to all.

will be closing my co-op bank and britannia accounts.

 

I have left the Co-op Bank. The financial ad management disasters were bad enough but the final straw was the compulsory introduction of contactless cards and  their unilateral decision to change the name on my credit card from 'given name' + 'surname' to Mrs X X Surname. A small thing I know but it really annoyed me.

 

I have just completed the 'Have Your Say' questionaire.

Designed specially to obtain the answer the setters wanted, Not the views of the person filling it in.

What has happened to OUR Co-op? Run into the ground by an idiot with no qualifications except the ability to talk the talk by the sound of it. Were the people who ran this bank really so stupid as to employ this man? And as others have said why was nothing noticed and acted upon when it must have been obvious they had a clown running the bank?

What do I want from this bank and the Co-Op in general? I want it to be an ethically led company with the interests of its members, the environment and all its suppliers placed at  the same high level. I don't want them investing in arms companies, chemical conglomerates, tobacco firms, any company that is sytematically destroying the environment, any organisations promoting any kind of discrimination whether that bne race, sex, religion or simply nationality. 

I want them to treat their staff and their customers with an equal amount of respect and creat job opportunities for everyone who wants to work whether they are 16 or 60.

I don't want to be run by a hedge fund that has eyes only on profit (which let's be honest is the way it's going to be).

And If I ever think the Co-Op is going to move away from its core values I'm out. My money wil got to a building society like Natiowide perhaps.

 

 

I have been a loyal supporter of the Coop Bank  and its ethical stance.

 

However the revelations about proposed pay for senior executives are shocking. There is nothing ethical about senior staff receiving huge pay and bonuses when thousands of  staff members are losing their jobs.

The comment that their pay packages are .."in the middle of a range of comparable companies" means nothing. I am at present staying with the Coop because I feel it is important for the Bank to be different, not just in the middle of a range of comparable companies. If these packages go through, I shall have no hesitation in moving my accounts.

While the news about executive pay concerns many Save Our Bank supporters, it is about the Co-operative Group and not the Co-operative Bank - see our post here

Similarly, before he resigned today (11 March) Euan Sutherland was not Chief Executive of the bank. Niall Booker the bank CEO is still in place and expected to stay there.

Thanks for the correction.

However it  is important for the matter to be discussed here for the following reasons :

1.Most of us consider the ethical stance of the Bank to be vital.

2.We have sleepwalked into a situation where that is seriously threatened.

3.One major factor which could help to keep the Bank ethical is the 30 % control of the Coop group. We should be trying to increase this, possibly by buying shares.

4.However if that 30 % is threatened all our efforts could be vain.

5.What has happened in the past few days shows how vulnerable the Coop group is.

6.Many of the Bank customers are Coop members. We need to concentrate on how to use our membership to help protect the Coop group. 

7.We need to be kept informed, and to inform ourselves, of the management structure and all that is happening, not just with the Bank, but with the entire group.

8.LET US STOP SLEEPWALKING.

As one of the largest UK operations that was not in the hands of the city, the Coop was a failr easy target after the dodgy move of Britannia and its debts, now the rest of the Coop seems to be targeted for sale and acquisition by the City and hedge funds.  All of this means that is no longer a Coop, so shouldn't it be changing its name, or is there some way it can be brounght under the control of the mainland European Coops and back into public ownership?

We think it can be rescued - using crowd-funding, old-fashioned member capital and yes, possibly, some investment by European coops (who are wary at the moment). Some say member capital can't raise the sums required but Credit Mutuel is embarking on a drive to raise €3.9bn

Things seem to be going from bad to worse. Top executive getting excessive salary, Coop share going down from 30% to 20%, Coop farms to be sold off possibly to Chinese or other foreign investors, my monthly fee going up from £13 to £15.50, though new customers get £100 - I find this last really insulting. As a loyal (ethical) customer for over 30 years I get nothing. Someone who hasn't been attracted by the ethics gets £100. Unethical! When I can sort myself out I will be moving.

evil edna's picture

You've got to wonder what this forum was about, who set it up and why.   The only message that seems to come out of it is "hang on in there", stick with the Co-op! The "moderators" have been banging out that message for months now;  and yet there's almost nothing left of the mutual; nothing worth fighting for.  We've had pie-in-the-sky talk about buying out the hedge funds, and pointless platitudes about a 20% mutual stake being "better than nothing", which just doesn't cut the mustard with me.

Call me a cynic, but was this forum set up with an explicit agenda of retaining bank customers?  Whatever the state of the bank? When our better judgments were crying out for us to jump ship, to genuine mutuals in the building society sector, and so on?

The greatest number of migrations from the Co-op was always going to be in the early days of the "crisis".  The longer that customers were discouraged from leaving, the more likely that inertia would set in and they'd stay.    Our initial resentment over the boardroom corruption would eventually subside, and many of us ended up staying with the Co-op, simply because doing nothing is always the easiest option.

Was telling the Co-op Bank customers to stay loyal just a ruse to retain the bank customer base; a ploy that has served the new Hedge Fund owners very nicely indeed?

We will definitely be quitting the Coop Bank now after more than 20 years (we joined in 1993, iirc).  That exodus will be on a point of principle which the moderators of this forum have only served to re-enforce.

The final thing left to perform is a post-mortem of the Co-op.  We must examine the true role of "Paul Flowers" and other City players, who it would seem had a remit of destroying the Coop Bank.   Flowers & Co were "Rogues Within";  acting on behalf of hidden hands in the City, with instructions to destroy the Bank's mutual status and remove it as a unique competitor. 

If that was the case, then there was nothing especially unusual in that line of action.    In recent years, several other mutuals were crashed in similar circumstances.  The Derbyshire and the Cheshire Building Societies were two of the more prominent examples. Deliberately imploded by corrupt board members - working clandestinely for secret banking interests in the City. These were  board members who deliberately mired OUR Societies with dodgy collateralised debt obligations (American "liar loans").  These CDOs were anything but investments, serving instead as fatally poisoned chalices.   Those Society board-members, and Paul Flowers from the Cooperative - belong in the dock, standing trial for their actions.

 

Sorry you feel this way. We are actually increasingly hopeful even though the dilution of the Co-operative Group holding is a setback.

Paul Flowers was no "city player". The idea that he was some sort of hedge fund trojan horse makes no sense at all.

If you follow the messages issued by Save Our Bank you will see that we say it as it is. Our aim is to hold the bank to account. That is why we are working with Unite the Union and why we have called on the bank to offer shares to customers and on the chief exec to refuse his bonus.

We are still urging customers to stick with the bank because we believe in solidarity and co-operative action. We are many thousands now. When people leave they abandon other customers who want to use their collective power.

If the bank becomes a lost cause then let's all move together.

Pages