by Gary Webber
2. February 2010 01:03
Yorkshire and Chelsea building societies are planning a merger that has just been approved by both sets of members.
If the formalities go ahead, the resulting building society will be the UK's second largest after Nationwide, with combined assets around £35bn.
Yorkshire BS currently occupies the #2 spot on its own, with 2 million members, while Chelsea is #4 on the list largest with approximately 700,000 members.
Why are the two societies merging?
According to a Chelsea spokesperson, simply as part of a "strategic review" — to plan for the future, that sort of thing. Although according to Mike Davies, head of mortgages at Skerritt Consultants, "both companies have not been able to lend as much as they want to and will need to merge to continue functioning."
The new society will also include Yorkshire's dormant specialist lender, Accord Mortgages.
As with most mergers, we're not expecting anything particularly exciting to happen as the deal is trodden out, but it's predicted the process will be complete by April 2010. If they do decide to change the name to Yorksea or Chelshire, we'll let you know.
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