Co-op TSB Merger

Financial Chat
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Seems Co-op is after TSB

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If I were a TSB customer, I wouldnā€™t want to have anything to do with Co-op Bank. They arenā€™t exactly the best bank out there.

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It seems to have been rejected anyway Co-opā€™s Ā£1bn bid for TSB rebuffed | Business | The Sunday Times

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ā€œThis is not a transaction we wish to explore at this momentā€ is not ruling anything out, so I wouldnā€™t be too surprised if it did end up happening.

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If they donā€™t get a better offer and really want to get rid of TSB, then they would obviously go back to Co-Op Bank.

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Yes, itā€™s a case of Co-operative Bank or possibly Virgin Money at the moment.

There was also a possibly that NewDay might buy TSB of Co-operative Bank a while ago, so they might bid again.

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If I were a Co-op Bank customer, I wouldnā€™t want to have anything to do with TSB. They arenā€™t exactly the best bank out there.

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:sweat_smile:

It is understood to have said that it would be willing to pay in excess of Ā£1bn for TSB.

TSB should be biting their hand off. Ā£1bn is incredibly generous.

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Now that Co-operative Bank has nothing to do with Co-op food shops, itā€™s a strange branding anomaly.

A merged business would most likely be called TSB.

Sort of like how CYBG bought Virgin Money, then re-branded itself as Virgin Money. A reverse-merger style situation.

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There was a tiny fuss with them keeping the co-operative name when the Co-op Group left the bank and I think it was allowed as they are an ethical bank with an ethical policy and run on co-operative values.

More than likely it could be an escape route for the shareholders to make the bank less ethical and more money by, as you state, becoming TSB.

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Yes, youā€™re right.

They were allowed to keep the name as a legacy of the ethical lending policies but they would presumably drop those like a stone if they merged with a larger bank.

As you say, the perfect excuse to both ditch the policies and the branding (and as a much smaller bank, it would be a case of the larger bank effectively absorbing them).

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Wow - deja vuā€¦

Lloyds TSB tried to sale off a chunk of itā€™s branches to meet the EU rules after they were bailed out by the UK government after being forced to buy Halifax/Bank of Scotland.

Co-op Bank was the bidder - but then the whole thing collapsed (I think due to come IT issue - Co-op was also going to migrate over to the same platform that Lloyds were on as part of the agreement?) and led to Co-op group having to hand over the Bank to private investors. And led to Lloyds TSB just splitting off and selling TSB as a separate bankā€¦

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Sabadell paid Ā£1.7bn for TSB in 2015 so selling for Ā£1bn isnā€™t bad.

Pretty generous deal as TSB are worth about Ā£1 without the bn after it.

To only take a 0.7bn loss they should be jumping at that chance.

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I believe it was because a financial black hole was uncovered in their mortgages (which was because they had taken over Britannia, and they turned out to have a lot of bad mortgages) so they couldnā€™t afford the takeover.

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And if I was a co-op customer Iā€™d want nothing to do with TSB.

If you thought the TSB fiasco was bad, imagine how a merged Co-op/TSB combination could have messed up :joy:

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Two banks, both with bad IT, combining would probably be a mess.

I think itā€™s most likely that Co-op would move across to TSBā€™s IT rather than the other way around, but it would be a painful migration for Co-op customers.

I would also expect Smile to be axed as a brand.

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What makes you say this?

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Whatā€™s so bad about co-op?

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I think given what we saw when TSB tried to leave the Lloyds banking platform and move to Sabadellā€™s Sabis-built ā€œProteo4UKā€ platform similar problems would probably plague Co-op customers if they were migrated to TSB.

My guess is the migration would happen that way as it makes sense to migration the smaller number of customers on an older platform over to the newer platform with more customers (TSB).

Nothingā€™s bad about Co-op, but itā€™s probably the junior weaker brand.

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Fun fact for you, Lloyds is not over the breakup - they still use lloydstsb as a URL for some things (not anything public facing though)

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Haha!

Probably just because itā€™s difficult updating every single procedure and application.

Although it wasnā€™t like Lloyds wanted to divest TSB, anyway - the EU State Aid rules required it.

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