Credit crunch halves lending at Nationwide |
Nationwide, Britain's biggest building society halved its mortgage lending last year as it halted an aggressive expansion drive and turned to retail savers to fund growth in the face of the credit crunch.
The society, owned by its 14 million members, also revealed a £102.2 million impairment charge as a result of its exposure to six structured investment vehicles (SIVs), which had to be restructured.
Esoteric and highly geared SIVs were thrown into turmoil last year after they were unable to borrow to cover their funding costs and were forced into asset fire sales.
The society, the second largest UK mortgage provider, said net residential mortgage lending totaled £6.7 billion over the 12 months to the beginning of April.
Last year, Nationwide lent its customers £11.2 billion over the same period.
Nationwide said it had chosen to take a "conservative and sustainable approach to lending". The move meant that its market share fell from 11 per cent to 7.1 per cent.
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Added on 28/05/2008 21:00:17
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