Re: Customer focussed or Bonus focussed?
I wondered at the time Britannia BS was merged into CFS what skeletons were in the closet, and how long it would take to find them. In the end the implosion was so massive it took out not only CFS but most of its CWS parent as well (also helped by the Somerfield acquisition so they weren't entirely blameless and had form in overpaying for vanity acquisitions). Britannia members got nothing from the [effective] demutualisation, bucking the windfall culture over the previous 15 years, other than a £1 membership each of the Co-Op, paid for out of what was left of BBS's own reserves. IoW each BBS membership was worth £1 which is very telling for what they knew then about the state of BBS's finances. Compare that to the ~£1000 that demutualisations had attracted.
If I was a conspiracy theorist I'd suggest the due diligence didn't fail and they knew exactly what they were taking on from that evidence alone. I'd also suspect that BBS manglement knew the problems they were facing and found, in CFS, a bunch of idiots that would acquire it regardless, to save them having to face any serious music. For the benefit of any litigious lawyers reading this, that's just personal opinion (and I'm an idiot), not a statement of fact.