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Trade Unions extending their reach into finance 5 Comments More | Login | Reply /

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  • Sound a tiny bit like BAWAG [wikipedia.org], a union-owned bank in Austria, that exploded a few years ago after the management (or rather the son of the CEO (or something)) lost a lot of money in some off-shore banking/betting scheme...

    • Reading that link, I think the difference here is that this bank isn't DIRECTLY owned by the unions. The unions "recommend" that their members join the Superannuation Funds, but don't own them. The members own the fund. And then the bank is owned by the funds.

      So there's a largely intact direct control link from the bank back to the actual workers. The unions act as a trust broker in the relationship, but they don't have direct control over the assets of their members, so there's no conflict of interest at t

  • This not too far removed from how the Co-Operative Bank [co-operativebank.co.uk] started in the UK. The bank was largely started as an extension to the ideals started by local co-operative societies [wikipedia.org] in the North West of England. Many of those societies were started by the local workers from mining and milling towns. The bank today now has a very strong ethical policy for anyone joining the bank, which has its origins in the way the societies wanted fair trade. Even businesses must sign an agreement before they can open an account a

  • I imagine you're already aware of this, but Members Equity was put on a S&P credit watch this time last year (http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-177431950.html [highbeam.com]). Unfortunately, I can't find any more recent indication of their status or how they have changed their investment policies since. Caveat depositor! :-)

    • Because our banking system generally is pretty strong (we've got 4 of the only 12 banks left with AA credit ratings) the government here has decided it's affordable to back them to the hilt.

      So about 6 months ago they agreed to underwrite all of the loans for all the banks. It was for a fee of course, so they are serving mainly as a loan default insurer of last resort. That move stopped the collapse or forced merger of some of the smaller banks that were looking dangerous.

      With that in place, plus the governm

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