British building societies to merge

British building society, Barnsley Building Society, is to merge with its larger rival Yorkshire Building Society after being exposed to losses from the collapse of the Icelandic banks.

The mutual had £10m (€12.7m) deposited with Kaupthing Singer & Friedlander, the UK arm of Iceland’s biggest bank Kaupthing, and Heritable Bank, which is part of Landsbanki.