Faulds welcomes Nationwide intervention
Dunfermline Building Society’s non-executive chairman, the legendary Scottish advertising figure Jim Faulds, has “warmly welcomed” its take over by Nationwide.
Nationwide today acquired the retail and wholesale deposits, branches, head office and most of the residential mortgage book of the Dunfermline Building Society.
Speaking before the completion of the deal, which will save 530 jobs at Dunfermline Faulds welcomed its involvement but also admitted that he was “deeply disappointed” by the Government’s lack of support in saving the 140 year old financial institution.
Since the confirmation of the deal, Nationwide has said that the Dunfermline brand will remain in place.
Faulds told Radio 4 ahead of the deal that he believed that Nationwide would do all it could to keep as much employment as it could in Scotland.
Faulds said: "I and my board have worked tirelessly to protect the members and the staff and we have no reason to feel bad about this.
"We are deeply disappointed with the Government's decision. It was unnecessary. But nevertheless we need to move on and we need to work with the new owners."
He added that the building society’s commercial book was performing "reasonably well" and said that he believed that it could have been saved had it been given access to around £20-30 million from the Government's liquidity scheme.
"This was an unnecessary move by the Treasury. They clearly didn't want to take the risk. We could have had an independent, sustainable future. What we needed was not capital, but access to the liquidity scheme and the Financial Services Authority raised the bar for access to the liquidity scheme,” said Faulds.
"We were not asking for money to be given to us. We were asking for a loan, which would have been repaid with interest. We could have serviced a loan of between £20-30 million. That's what we think we needed. It would have been secured against a good property book and a social housing book that's rock solid."
The value of the deal and any tax payer liability will be announced later today by the Treasuary.
The last advertising campaign for the Dunfermline Building Society was created by Family with The Media Shop handling the planning and buyingin September 2007.
Jim Faulds is also chairman of Edinburgh advertising agency Newhaven, and was chairman of Edinburgh based design agency Navyblue for two years until he resigned in 2006, citing commitments in London as the reason.