Virgin Money agrees to £2.9bn proposed takeover by Nationwide Building Society

dailyrecord.co.uk:

High street lender Virgin Money has agreed a £2.9 billion proposed takeover by Nationwide Building Society in a move set to create the UK’s second largest mortgage and savings group.

Nationwide has put forward a 220p a share approach for Virgin Money, including a planned 2p a share dividend payout, which it said was a 38 per cent increase on Virgin Money’s closing share price on Wednesday.The pair said they had reached a preliminary agreement on the deal, with Nationwide now looking through Virgin Money’s books before making a firm offer.

The planned tie-up would create a combined lender worth around £366.3 billion with total lending and advances of about £283.5 billion.Nationwide said it does not intend to make any material changes to the size of the Virgin Money 7,300-strong workforce “in the near term”.Nationwide also stressed it would remain a mutual building society if the deal goes ahead.This would see the two brands continue to be run as separate entities, with the Virgin Money brand retained for around six years.

As this announcement has just been made, we will update this article as soon as more details are made available. Join our Daily Record Money WhatsApp community here to receive alerts on the latest money news from benefits to shopping deals.