Letter: Investors lose

Sir: The greed-driven obsession to destroy the building society movement continues. The latest confidence trick is to induce gullible members of the Birmingham Midshires Building Society to sell out to Halifax Plc for a few hundred pounds ("Members fight Midshires terms", 2 November).

The losers would be the small investors, who would no longer own and control their society under the one-member-one-vote principle.

The building societies are a thorn in the side of their plc competitors because they can offer better value to customers. They are a healthy ingredient in a mixed economy and government, until now inactive, should legislate to make it harder for societies to be sold or converted to plc status.

R P O'BRIEN

London HA4