Nationwide Building Society has booked a larger than expected accounting gain of £2.3 billion on its acquisition of Virgin Money UK, while reporting a 24 per cent slide in underlying interim profits.
Britain’s biggest mutual with 16 million customers said the gain on acquisition was because the £2.8 billion purchase price for Virgin was at a large discount to its book value and its fair-value assessment of Virgin’s assets.
Underlying profits at Nationwide fell to £959 million in the six months to 30 September as the society passed on higher than average savings rates to its customers and because of the timing effect of base rate changes.
Member benefits — a calculation of how much is passed on to members in better than average savings