Scottish building society sold

Meanwhile, Dunfermline building society, Scotland’s largest, is to be broken up and sold off. After incurring losses of £26 million last week, the Treasury announced that good loans and deposits are being bought by Nationwide and the Treasury will take in £1 billion of commercial property lending and mortgage debt. Alistair Darling had said the Dunfermline would have needed between £60 million and £100 million to keep it going because of its exposure to risky assets, and full nationalisation would not have provided ‘value for money’, but its chairman blamed the Treasury of having ‘deliberately scuppered’ any chance of the society remaining independent.