IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cbr/cbrwps/wp205.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Mutuality and Corporate Governance: The Evolution of UK Building Societies Following Deregulation

Author

Listed:
  • J.Cook
  • S.Deakin
  • A.Hughes

Abstract

This paper studies the effects of deregulation following the UK Building Societies Act 1986, which opened the way for competition between building societies and commercial banks and introduced a procedure for the demutualisation of a building society. it is argued that the Act brought about a rearrangement of property rights which destabilised the building society form. A wave of demutualisations followed in the 1990's. the beneficiaries of change included corporate managers whose earnings and status were enhanced following conversion, and speculative investors who profitted from windfall gains. These were set against losses to borrowers, in the form of higher costs of loans, and to communities, in the form of reduced diversity of services. There is no guarentee that the recent trajectory of the sector is one of evolution to efficiency. Rather, its experience illustrates the often enexpected consequences for corporate governance of changes in regulation and property rights.

Suggested Citation

  • J.Cook & S.Deakin & A.Hughes, 2001. "Mutuality and Corporate Governance: The Evolution of UK Building Societies Following Deregulation," Working Papers wp205, Centre for Business Research, University of Cambridge.
    • Handle: RePEc:cbr:cbrwps:wp205
    Note: PRO-2
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.jbs.cam.ac.uk/cbrwp205/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Fama, Eugene F & Jensen, Michael C, 1983. "Separation of Ownership and Control," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 26(2), pages 301-325, June.
    2. Fama, Eugene F & Jensen, Michael C, 1983. "Agency Problems and Residual Claims," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 26(2), pages 327-349, June.
    3. Howard Jarman, 1998. "Building Societies: Some Suggestions for Reform," The Service Industries Journal, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 18(2), pages 161-176, April.
    4. J. David Cummins & Mary A. Weiss & Hongmin Zi, 1998. "Organizational Form and Efficiency: An Analysis of Stock and Mutual Property-Liability Insurers," Center for Financial Institutions Working Papers 97-02, Wharton School Center for Financial Institutions, University of Pennsylvania.
    5. Hart, Oliver & Moore, John, 1998. "Cooperatives vs. outside ownership," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 19360, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    6. David T LLEWELLYN & Mark J HOLMES, 1991. "In Defence Of Mutuality: A Redress To An Emerging Conventional Wisdom," Annals of Public and Cooperative Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 62(3), pages 319-354, July.
    7. Luigi Zingales, 1997. "Corporate Governance," NBER Working Papers 6309, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. Donal McKillop & Charles Ferguson, 1998. "An Examination of Borrower Orientation and Scale Effects in UK Credit Unions," Annals of Public and Cooperative Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 69(2), pages 219-242, June.
    9. Kevin Amess & Barry Howcroft, 2001. "Corporate Governance Structures and the Comparative Advantage of Credit Unions," Corporate Governance: An International Review, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 9(1), pages 59-65, January.
    10. John KAY, 1991. "The Economics Of Mutuality," Annals of Public and Cooperative Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 62(3), pages 309-318, July.
    11. Lamm-Tennant, Joan & Starks, Laura T, 1993. "Stock versus Mutual Ownership Structures: The Risk Implications," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 66(1), pages 29-46, January.
    12. Thompson, Steve, 1997. "Takeover activity among financial mutuals: An analysis of target characteristics," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 21(1), pages 37-53, January.
    13. Hilary Ingham & Steve Thompson, 1994. "Paying for performance: Efficiency wages and mutuality," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 15(4), pages 279-289, July/Augu.
    14. Ingham, Hilary & Thompson, Steve, 1995. "Mutuality, Performance and Executive Compensation," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 57(3), pages 295-308, August.
    15. Barry Howcroft, 1999. "Mutuality versus Public Company – the Debate in Europe and the USA," Corporate Governance: An International Review, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 7(2), pages 167-177, April.
    16. Patricia Born & William M. Gentry & W. Kip Viscusi & Richard J. Zeckhauser, 1998. "Organizational Form and Insurance Company Performance: Stocks versus Mutuals," NBER Chapters, in: The Economics of Property-Casualty Insurance, pages 167-192, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    17. J. David Cummins & Mary A. Weiss & Hongmin Zi, 1999. "Organizational Form and Efficiency: The Coexistence of Stock and Mutual Property-Liability Insurers," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 45(9), pages 1254-1269, September.
    18. Mayers, David & Shivdasani, Anil & Smith, Clifford W, Jr, 1997. "Board Composition and Corporate Control: Evidence from the Insurance Industry," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 70(1), pages 33-62, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Elisabetta Montanaro, 2010. "Islamic Banking: A Challenge for the Basel Capital Accord," Chapters, in: M. Fahim Khan & Mario Porzio (ed.), Islamic Banking and Finance in the European Union, chapter 7, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    2. Roger Spear, 2004. "Governance in Democratic Member‐Based Organisations," Annals of Public and Cooperative Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 75(1), pages 33-60, March.
    3. J. N. Marshall & A. Pike & J. S. Pollard & J. Tomaney & S. Dawley & J. Gray, 2012. "Placing the run on northern rock," Journal of Economic Geography, Oxford University Press, vol. 12(1), pages 157-181, January.
    4. Patrizia Battilani & Vera Zamagni, 2012. "The managerial transformation of Italian co-operative enterprises 1946--2010," Business History, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 54(6), pages 964-985, October.
    5. Neill Marshall & Stuart Dawley & Andy Pike & Jane Pollard, 2018. "Geographies of corporate philanthropy: The Northern Rock Foundation," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 50(2), pages 266-287, March.
    6. J Neill Marshall & Richard Willis & Ranald Richardson, 2003. "Demutualisation, Strategic Choice, and Social Responsibility," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 21(5), pages 735-760, October.
    7. Manuel Hensmans, 2011. "WHAT IS STRATEGY? The case of retail finance and English Building Societies," Working Papers CEB 11-049, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    8. Jean-Robert Alcaras & Jean-Noël Ory & Nathalie Dompnier & François Rousseau & Mireille Jaeger & Emmanuelle Gurtner & Laurent Ducau, 2008. "La gouvernance partenariale des Banques coopératives françaises," Working Papers hal-00501816, HAL.
    9. Francesc Relano, 2015. "Disambiguating the concept of social banking," Post-Print hal-01507875, HAL.
    10. Jean-Noël Ory & Mireille Jaeger & Emmanuelle Gurtner, 2006. "La banque à forme coopérative peut-elle soutenir durablement la compétition avec la banque SA?," Revue Finance Contrôle Stratégie, revues.org, vol. 9(2), pages 121-157, June.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. John K. Ashton & Stephen Letza, 2003. "The Differential Returns Offered by Mutually Owned and Proprietary UK Depository Institutions: 1993–2000," Annals of Public and Cooperative Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 74(2), pages 183-204, June.
    2. Bernhard Mahlberg & Thomas Url, 2000. "The Transition to the Single Market in the German Insurance Industry," WIFO Working Papers 131, WIFO.
    3. Yoshikatsu Shinozawa, 2010. "Mutual Versus Proprietary Ownership: An Empirical Study From The Uk Unit Trust Industry With A Company‐Product Measure," Annals of Public and Cooperative Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 81(2), pages 247-280, June.
    4. Evans, Lewis & Meade, Richard, 2005. "The Role and Significance of Cooperatives in New Zealand Agriculture, A Comparative Institutional Analysis," Working Paper Series 3847, Victoria University of Wellington, The New Zealand Institute for the Study of Competition and Regulation.
    5. Seog S. Hun, 2006. "Limited Competition, Information Asymmetry, and Organizational Forms," Asia-Pacific Journal of Risk and Insurance, De Gruyter, vol. 1(2), pages 1-14, February.
    6. Fabrice Roth, 2000. "Gouvernement des entreprises et stratégie du dirigeant:une étude clinique dans le secteur de l'assurance," Working Papers CREGO 1000701, Université de Bourgogne - CREGO EA7317 Centre de recherches en gestion des organisations.
    7. Marco Zanobio, 2012. "Aspetti teorici della Corporate Governance," DISEIS - Quaderni del Dipartimento di Economia internazionale, delle istituzioni e dello sviluppo dis1202, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Dipartimento di Economia internazionale, delle istituzioni e dello sviluppo (DISEIS).
    8. Yoshikatsu Shinozawa, 2007. "The Effect of Organisational Form on Investment Products: an empirical analysis of the UK unit trust industry," Corporate Governance: An International Review, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 15(6), pages 1244-1259, November.
    9. Patricia Born & William M. Gentry & W. Kip Viscusi & Richard J. Zeckhauser, 1998. "Organizational Form and Insurance Company Performance: Stocks versus Mutuals," NBER Chapters, in: The Economics of Property-Casualty Insurance, pages 167-192, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. Lu, Erin P. & Lai, Gene C. & Ma, Qingzhong, 2017. "Organizational structure, risk-based capital requirements, and the sales of downgraded bonds," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 74(C), pages 51-68.
    11. Booth, James R. & Cornett, Marcia Millon & Tehranian, Hassan, 2002. "Boards of directors, ownership, and regulation," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 26(10), pages 1973-1996, October.
    12. Cummins, J. David & Rubio-Misas, Maria, 2006. "Deregulation, Consolidation, and Efficiency: Evidence from the Spanish Insurance Industry," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 38(2), pages 323-355, March.
    13. Noel O'Sullivan, 1998. "Ownership and Governance in the Insurance Industry: A Review of the Theory and Evidence," The Service Industries Journal, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 18(4), pages 145-161, October.
    14. Alexander Brink, 2010. "Enlightened Corporate Governance: Specific Investments by Employees as Legitimation for Residual Claims," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 93(4), pages 641-651, June.
    15. Salim Chahine & Assem Safieddine, 2011. "Is corporate governance different for the Lebanese banking system?," Journal of Management & Governance, Springer;Accademia Italiana di Economia Aziendale (AIDEA), vol. 15(2), pages 207-226, May.
    16. Fabrice Roth, 2000. "Gouvernement des entreprises et stratégie du dirigeant:une étude clinique dans le secteur de l'assurance," Revue Finance Contrôle Stratégie, revues.org, vol. 3(4), pages 179-199, December.
    17. Fabrice Roth, 2012. "Crise et régulation des marchés financiers : Quel impact sur les formes mutuelles dans l'assurance ?," Working Papers halshs-00692342, HAL.
    18. repec:vuw:vuwscr:18942 is not listed on IDEAS
    19. Butzbach Olivier & von Mettenheim Kurt E., 2015. "Alternative Banking and Theory," Accounting, Economics, and Law: A Convivium, De Gruyter, vol. 5(2), pages 105-171, July.
    20. Dionne, Georges & Harrington, Scott, 2017. "Insurance and Insurance Markets," Working Papers 17-2, HEC Montreal, Canada Research Chair in Risk Management.
    21. Evans, Lewis & Meade, Richard, 2005. "The Role and Significance of Cooperatives in New Zealand Agriculture, A Comparative Institutional Analysis," Working Paper Series 18942, Victoria University of Wellington, The New Zealand Institute for the Study of Competition and Regulation.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    corporate governance; deregulation; mutuality; property rights; building societies; demutualisation; path dependence.;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • K22 - Law and Economics - - Regulation and Business Law - - - Business and Securities Law
    • L31 - Industrial Organization - - Nonprofit Organizations and Public Enterprise - - - Nonprofit Institutions; NGOs; Social Entrepreneurship

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cbr:cbrwps:wp205. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Ruth Newman (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.jbs.cam.ac.uk .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.