The ‘Halifax’ culture was well and truly lost years ago - Yorkshire Post Letters

I and no doubt many other ex-employees of the Halifax Building Society have been asked but just one question – ‘What did I think about Lloyds dropping the Halifax name?’

Being a local lad, I was always very proud of the fact that the town gave birth and its name to the world’s largest building society and to forget this fact is particularly hurtful.

The Halifax Building Society became the largest in the world by organic growth and championing the small saver. The town of Halifax was well represented at board level with directors coming from local firms such as Crossley carpets and Mackintosh toffees.

Under the leadership of Sir Enoch Hill it expanded its branch network, each branch being essentially a smaller version of the main Halifax branch along with the Halifax name over the door. These branches were responsible for vetting and rationing mortgages as well as chasing up any bad debt and were invariably managed by male missionaries with a ‘West Riding’ accent.

In truth it was a simple but robust business model which relied totally on its retail savers for its funding. This pragmatic approach to business served the organisation well until the late 1980s when directors and executives with big city backgrounds realised that the deregulation of the 1980s allowed them to start raising increasingly large tranches of funds from the wholesale money markets.

This new breed of management were also jealous of the efficient administrative operations which were all based in Halifax and they argued that a large national organisation should distribute these operations around the country.

In 1995 Chairman Jon Foulds and his CEO Mike Blackburn persuaded the board that a takeover of the leaderless Leeds Permanent Building Society would be a good idea. Not surprisingly all the members voted for a free handout of several thousand pounds worth of shares but this was in no way necessary for the continued success of the Halifax Building Society. It did however demonstrate the desire of the management to move away from the ‘Halifax’ mutual culture.

Events were changing quickly when a Cambridge educated Scotsman, Dennis Stevenson, took over the chairmanship in 1999. He commented that the Halifax was short of world class management, but that had been corrected by the appointment of Andy Hornby – a Harvard graduate with experience in supermarkets.

In 2001 HBOS was created with the new headquarters in Scotland – unbelievable to anyone coming from a Halifax background. With a sell, sell approach to business these people presided over one of the biggest disasters in Britain's financial services.

The Halifax culture had been well and truly lost. Gone were the days when the Chief General Manager had to not only work but live in Halifax. Even those who were not born in the town like Potter, Thayre and Spalding all moved their home to this centre of Building Society excellence.

So, as I walk through Halifax and observe the over £100m refurbishment of the head office what do I think? Firstly, it is a pity that they could only find enough money to stone wash just a fraction of the Yorkshire stone cladding. It appears as a half-hearted attempt to pacify the people working inside the building.

Do I still feel proud of the ‘Halifax’? Yes, I do but only the town and its history but not the organisation which has taken over the running of what was once the world’s largest building society. Maybe it’s a good thing to let the name go, we do not want it to be associated with any more disasters.