Newcastle Building Society slumps to a £4.9m loss

Jul 30 2010 By Karen Dent

NORTH East financial institution Newcastle Building Society slumped to a £4.9m loss for the fist six months of the year with a £4m restructuring cost which included redundancies blowing a hole in its finances.

Ongoing low interest rates depressed overall performance with revenues down by 33% from £24.5m last year to £18.4m this.
The £0.9m trading loss incurred by the Newcastle for the first six months of this year compares to a profit of £700,000 for the corresponding period last year.

However the society yesterday revealed that its Solutions side of the business - which now accounts for in excess of 20% of revenues - was continuing to perform well and had just landed a new contract creating an additional 80 jobs.

In May the Newcastle announced it was making 126 redundancies and closing four North East branches in Newcastle’s West Road, York, Crook and Yarm.