A victory for Nationwide’s board – but members still deserve stronger voting rights | Nils Pratley

Building society rules need an overhaul if ballots on executive pay are non-binding and huge takeovers don’t require approval

In the end, the rebellion at Nationwide, the country’s biggest building society, was modest. James Sherwin-Smith, who was trying to become the first member-nominated director in almost 25 years, secured only 12% of votes cast – enough to count as unusual but a long way short of causing embarrassment for the board. Meanwhile, the society got its usual 95%-plus majorities on every other resolution, including the advisory one on directors’ pay.

There are two ways the directors could react to this result. The first is to conclude that everything is tickety-boo at the UK’s most important mutual. The society’s financial performance is undeniably strong, after all, and the scores for customer satisfaction remain streets ahead of those of the shareholder-owned banks. In operational terms, a lot is going right at Nationwide. That helps to explain why the members are not clamouring to register dissatisfaction, or, indeed, to register much at all: only about 600,000 out of 19 million voted at the annual meeting.