Yorkshire BS to Merge with Barnsley BS

The deal was initiated by the board of the Barnsley BS to protect itself from the possible loss of up to £10million deposited with Icelandic banks. This merger with the larger Yorkshire BS is expected to be completed by the end of the year. There will be no windfall for Barnsley savers.

The Yorkshire is the third-largest building society in the UK with 136 branches and 1.9 million members. The Barnsley has only 8 branches and 60,000 members.

In September, the UK’s biggest building society, the Nationwide, staged a rescue takeover of two small societies, the Derbyshire and the Cheshire.

The Barnsley is the latest casualty of the troubled Icelandic banking system, which has seen hundreds of thousands of UK savers losing access, at least for the time being, to their accounts with the Icesave internet bank and other Icelandic financial institutions.