MEN OF PROPERTY
PORTRAITS OF VICTORIAN men of property line the walls of building society boardrooms across Britain. Watch chains gleaming across well-padded waistcoats, sober-suited men with confident, paternal expressions provide a silent audience for today's directors' discussions about an uncertain future.
The men around those board tables -- and despite the occasional lady director, men they overwhelmingly are -- seem to have much in common with those silent onlookers.
They are successful men -- but rarely through their efforts within the building society world. It is only in the past five years that executives of the societies have commonly achieved director status. The majority of board members are part-timers, non-executives whose careers have taken them to the top in other parts of the business, professional, or social world.
In another age, they would have been called 'worthy' men. In any other 120 [pounds sterling] billion-plus industry in the second half of the 1980s having a majority of non-specialists on the board would be regarded as a reckless eccentricity. But that would be to ignore the past, and anyone who does that risks misunderstanding both the organizational culture of the building societies, and their approach now to the most radical change in their 200-year history.