A building society is a financial institution owned by its members as a mutual organization, which offers banking and related financial services, especially savings and mortgage lending. They exist in the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand, and formerly in Ireland and several Commonwealth countries, including South Africa as mutual banks. They are similar to credit unions, but rather than promoting thrift and offering unsecured and business loans, the purpose of a building society is to provide home mortgages to members. Borrowers and depositors are society members, setting policy and appointing directors on a one-member, one-vote basis. Building societies often provide other retail banking services, such as current accounts, credit cards and personal loans. The term "building society" first arose in the 19th century in Great Britain from cooperative savings groups.
A farm is an area of land that is devoted primarily to agricultural processes with the primary objective of producing food and other crops; it is the basic facility in food production. The name is used for specialized units such as arable farms, vegetable farms, fruit farms, dairy, pig and poultry farms, and land used for the production of natural fiber, biofuel, and other commodities. It includes ranches, feedlots, orchards, plantations and estates, smallholdings, and hobby farms, and includes the farmhouse and agricultural buildings as well as the land. In modern times, the term has been extended so as to include such industrial operations as wind farms and fish farms, both of which can operate on land or at sea.
Corporate farming is the practice of large-scale agriculture on farms owned or greatly influenced by large companies. This includes corporate ownership of farms and selling of agricultural products, as well as the roles of these companies in influencing agricultural education, research, and public policy through funding initiatives and lobbying efforts.
A family farm is generally understood to be a farm owned and/or operated by a family; it is sometimes considered to be an estate passed down by inheritance.
Northern Rock, formerly the Northern Rock Building Society, was a British bank. Based at Regent Centre in Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom, Northern Rock was originally a building society. It demutualised and became Northern Rock bank in 1997, when it floated on the London Stock Exchange with the ticker symbol NRK.
The Abbey National Building Society was formed in 1944 by the merger of the Abbey Road and the National building societies.
The Land Conservancy of British Columbia is a not-for-profit, charitable land trust based in British Columbia, Canada.
Lloyds Bank plc is a British retail and commercial bank with branches across England and Wales. It has traditionally been considered one of the "Big Four" clearing banks. Lloyds Bank is the largest retail bank in Britain, and has an extensive network of branches and ATMs in England and Wales and offers 24-hour telephone and online banking services.
Allied Irish Banks, p.l.c. is one of the so-called Big Four commercial banks in the Republic of Ireland. AIB offers a full range of personal, business and corporate banking services. The bank also offers a range of general insurance products such as home, travel and car. It offers life assurance and pensions through its tied agency with Irish Life Assurance plc.
IFC is an American basic cable channel owned by AMC Networks. Launched in 1994 as the Independent Film Channel, a spin-off of former sister channel Bravo, IFC originally operated as a commercial-free service, devoted to showing independent films without interruption. Starting in the late 2000s, the channel gradually dropped independent films in its lineup in favor of comedy and horror programming before it became an ad-supported channel in 2010 and renaming itself to IFC in 2014.
The Farm Credit System (FCS) in the United States is a nationwide network of borrower-owned lending institutions and specialized service organizations. The Farm Credit System provides more than $343 billion in loans, leases, and related services to farmers, ranchers, rural homeowners, aquatic producers, timber harvesters, agribusinesses, and agricultural and rural utility cooperatives.
Cerberus Capital Management, L.P. is a global alternative investment firm with assets across credit, private equity, and real estate strategies. The firm is based in New York City, and run by Steve Feinberg, who co-founded Cerberus in 1992, with William L. Richter, who serves as a senior managing director. The firm has affiliate and advisory offices in the United States, Europe and Asia.
The Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery, and Enforcement Act of 1989 (FIRREA), is a United States federal law enacted in the wake of the savings and loan crisis of the 1980s.
The Big Four is the colloquial name given to the four main banks in several countries where the banking industry is dominated by just four institutions and where the phrase has thus gained relevance. Some countries include more or fewer institutions in such rankings, leading to other names such as Big Three, Big Five, or Big Six.
IndyMac, a contraction of Independent National Mortgage Corporation, was an American bank based in California that failed in 2008 and was seized by the United States Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC).
National Westminster Bank, commonly known as NatWest, is a major retail and commercial bank in the United Kingdom based in London, England. It was established in 1968 by the merger of National Provincial Bank and Westminster Bank. In 2000, it became part of The Royal Bank of Scotland Group, which was re-named NatWest Group in 2020. Following ringfencing of the group's core domestic business, the bank became a direct subsidiary of NatWest Holdings; NatWest Markets comprises the non-ringfenced investment banking arm. The British government currently owns 39%, previously 54.7% of NatWest Group after spending £45 billion bailing out the lender in 2008. NatWest International is a trading name of RBS International, which also sits outside the ringfence.
ING Vysya Bank was a privately owned Indian multinational bank based in Bangalore, with retail, wholesale, and private banking platforms formed from the 2002 purchase of an equity stake in Vysya Bank by the Dutch ING Group. This merger marked the first between an Indian bank and a foreign bank. Prior to this transaction, Vysya Bank had a seven-year-old strategic alliance and shareholding arrangement with erstwhile Belgian bank Banque Bruxelles Lambert, which was also acquired by ING Group in 1998.
HBOS plc is a banking and insurance company in the United Kingdom, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Lloyds Banking Group, having been taken over in January 2009. It was the holding company for Bank of Scotland plc, which operated the Bank of Scotland and Halifax brands in the UK, as well as HBOS Australia and HBOS Insurance & Investment Group Limited, the group's insurance division.
In the period September 2007 to December 2009, during the events now widely known as the Global Financial Crisis, the UK government enacted a number of financial interventions in support of the UK banking sector and four UK banks in particular.
Places for People (PfP) is a property management, development, regeneration and leisure company based in the UK.
