Today, Skipton Building Society (89 branches, 830,000 members, the UK's fourth largest) takes over Chesham Building Society (3 branches, 20,000 members, one of the smallest — and, established in 1845, the UK's oldest).

Background to the Skipton takeover of Chesham Building Society

Despite the ongoing furore about Skipton's "exceptional circumstances" SVR increase for existing mortgage borrowers, it seems to be trading nicely: yesterday it announced pre-tax profits had recovered from £22.5 million to £63.5 million.

Not such a rosy picture for The Chesham. After 165 years, world wars and depressions, the UK's oldest building society, after operating at a loss last year, finally raised the white flag at 2010's economic and interest rate conditions.

Where's Chesham, by the way?

The society is based in Buckinghamshire, in the three commuter towns of Chesham, Aylesbury and Little Chalfont, with an agency in Tring, Hertfordshire. Skipton has promised to keep all four open for at least 12 months.

No perks, but some drops in mortgage rates 

Chesham members don't receive much in the way of perks from the takeover. They get to use Skipton's branch network and that's about it. However, some Chesham mortgage borrowers will see their rates drop by 1.5%.

Skipton borrowers frustrated? 

If we had a Skipton building society standard variable rate mortgage and found out our rate had just increased 1.5% because of "exceptional circumstances", we'd be infuriated to find out the society is at the same time increasing profits, splashing out on a takeover and giving certain Chesham borrowers a 1.5% mortgage rate reduction. Wouldn't you?

A look at the good and bad guys when it's time to revert to your lender's standard rate.

Following yesterday's post on Standard Variable Rate (SVR) increases, we thought we'd round up the current highest and lowest revert-to rates we're aware of.

The range between the best and worst in the market is quite staggering — but then, these are (still) exceptional times. 

Best & Lowest Mortgage SVRs:

The following data is correct at time of publishing:

As you can see, some lenders followed the Bank Of England's movements and are still at 2% (a 'normal' kind of margin) above the base rate.  Their customers will be pleased to just sit tight at reversion time!

Worst & Highest Mortgage SVRs:

Meanwhile though, other lenders have acted as if nothing has happened in 12 months:

For an argument on why building societies are putting up SVRs, see yesterday's post. However, if you have one of these lenders' mortgages, you're not going to see the funny side of a standard variable rate nearly twelve times base rate.  Re-mortgage options might be a bit limited at the moment, but there's no harm in getting some advice!