UNHAV is the Justice Campaign preparing joint court action in the UK for the 55,000 members of the former HALIFAX BUILDING SOCIETY who were Resident in USA & 80 Other Countries Worldwide and were Denied their Conversion / Demutualisation Shares-- Sign Now and help these people get their fair shares!
Historical Background
THE HALIFAX was a Building Society, a kind of UK bank, run as a mutual society, originally set up specifically to collect savings and to provide mortgages to home buyers.
Gradually, The Halifax and other UK building societies began to provide the same services as normal banks: cheque books, credit and cash cards, etc., culminating, in this case, on 2nd June 1997, in a vote among the 8 million mutual owner members, i.e. both investors and mortgagors, as to whether or not there should be demutualisation and conversion into a bank with Plc status.
In order to persuade the majority to vote in favour, the Board offered all members an allocation of free shares in direct proportion to their investments and/or mortgages. In essence, all the conversion literature led the member to firmly believe that he would indeed receive these shares if he and the majority voted YES.
However, only after conversion did the 55,000 members resident overseas, whether temporarily or permanently, discover that they had been summarily excluded from the share allocation, and, worse, that not even cash in lieu would be offered to them in compensation. Halifax alleged that it could not send shares to certain countries, or that, as there were less than 1,000 members in some territories, it would be too expensive even to investigate if shares could be allocated. Thus, for example, the 15,000 members in the USA, 4,500 in Canada, 4,000 in New Zealand, plus another 22,000 scattered all over the globe, were denied their rights to shares or cash equivalent.
This is not to mention another 150,000 UK resident members, including handicapped, children, elderly and joint account holders, who were quite scandalously excluded on other very spurious grounds, which can be seen among the many Press Reports presented on the website. Indeed, comprehensive information is displayed on the various pages of the UNHAV website at: www.rain.org/~jmhmps/unhav.html
