Co-op Bank "for sale"

The board of the Co-op Bank has announced that it is seeking new owners, while also looking at alternative ways of raising capital.

The bank has issued a statement to customers.

They gave us a similar statement:

Message from The Co-operative Bank CEO Liam Coleman

As you will have seen today we have announced that, having concluded our annual planning review, the Board has decided to begin a process to sell the Bank, and also to consider alternative options to build our capital position.

Our decision to embark on a sale process and look at other ways of building capital has been taken very carefully. We know that our ethical banking proposition, governed by our ethical policy, is important to our customers. This is about the best route forward to deliver the next phase of the Bank's turnaround plan. No outcome has been decided yet and a sale is, of course, dependent on agreeing an offer that is right for our customers and other stakeholders. We believe our approach to banking, with values and ethics at the centre of everything we do, sets us apart and remains the key reason why approximately 4 million customers choose to bank with us, and as we move through this process it will be a key consideration.

The Bank is stronger in a number of areas today than in 2013. We have worked hard to rebuild our retail banking proposition, differentiated by our values and ethics and strong customer service. We have also made considerable progress in fixing major legacy issues we inherited and the Bank is more resilient overall, underlined this weekend by the successful migration of our mainframe banking systems to our partner IBM, which marked a major milestone on our journey to turn the Bank around.

As we go through the process, it remains very much business as usual, and our number one priority is to continue to provide the high quality service that is valued by our customers.

Today’s announcement does not affect customers’ products or the service we provide to them.

We will be communicating with colleagues, customers, and our wider stakeholders at the appropriate time during this process.