Nationwide directors celebrate ballot victory

Nationwide to Remain Building Society

By a three-to-one vote, they rejected five rebel candidates standing for the management board on a ticket of converting the Nationwide into a bank.

The strength of feeling was rejected in the size of the ballot. 1.3 million members voted, ten times more than usual. There had been suggestions that if the Nationwide -- Britain's biggest remaining building society -- opted for conversion, other building societies would have been forced to follow suit.

The company's chief executive, Brian Davis, said arguments in favour of conversion were misguided: "We've been trying to point out that there's no such thing as free shares and you will pay for them in the long term. What we're able to do by offering very competitive rates in the high street is put that message home and I hope that's why people will recognise that staying with a building society is in everybody's long-term interest."

Haldern, the "carpetbagger-in-chief"

Mr Hardern, a former royal butler, said:"We're very disappointed of course. I expected to be a director of the Nationwide building society by now, but there you are. My finger wasn't on the electorate and I suppose I deserve to lose."

It's still unclear how one man came to threaten the future of the Nationwide to such an extent, and whether the vote reflects a changing public mood towards building societies and windfall payments.

A spokeswoman for the Building Society Association welcomed it as a vote of confidence in the mutual building society sector: "It is good news for consumers as without building societies acting as a competitive restraint on the banks, there can be no doubt that mortgage rates would be increased and savings rates lowered."