On a chilly day in January, Kevin Parry welcomed a visitor into his chairman’s office at the Nationwide Building Society, just a stone’s throw from the Bank of England. This guest was to have a bigger role in shaping the future of the country’s biggest mutual than many others who had passed over its threshold in its 140-year history.
The visitor was David Bennett, chairman of Virgin Money, who had been invited in for a quiet chat that would eventually lead to one of the most surprising deals in recent financial history: Nationwide’s £2.9 billion takeover of a FTSE 250 bank.
At first, Bennett was coy, playing down the idea that Virgin Money was interested in a suitor — despite it being the worst-kept
