Please join me in urging the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) and the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) to act now to stop the demutualisation of Liverpool Victoria (LV=).

One hundred and seventy-eight years after LV= started trading as a friendly society to help the working poor in Liverpool avoid the Victorian ‘scandal’ of a pauper’s funeral, it is being demutualised and sold to the controversial American private equity giant Bain Capital. 

Past demutualisations in the UK have been universally bad for members, customers and the wider economy. They’ve reduced choice in the market and removed a practical alternative to shareholder based businesses.

Mutual businesses offer a vital dimension to the moral economic life of this country and once they are lost it is very hard to get them back.

We, the undersigned, call on the regulators (PRA & FCA) to stop the demutualisation of LV= and its sale to Bain Capital.

Information released to LV= members is inadequate and one-sided. The regulators should immediately make public key documents that have been kept secret from members of LV=:

• Details of the rival offers to buy LV=, including from Royal London, which would have kept the business mutual
• How much capital LV= needs and what the business plan says it should be spent on
• How much CEO Mark Hartigan and Chairman Alan Cook stand to benefit from continuing to run the business under Bain’s ownership

Until these important facts are made public and shared with members, the demutualisation vote should be suspended.