The members are set to leave over disagreements about the shares they own in PMPA’s lender, Unity Homeloans. However, one of the PMPA members has informed Mortgage Introducer that this issue is just the catalyst for what has been a long period of disagreement between the members about the running of PMPA.
The 18 members will be holding a crunch meeting next week to discuss the setting up of their new association. Consultancy firm John Wriglesworth is believed to be helping in the set-up of the new collective.
A joint statement by John Mawdsley, managing director of The Mortgage Partnership, and Andy Linnett, director of LMS, both set to leave PMPA to set up AMPD, said: "The majority of the 18 members will be leaving PMPA to join the new group. The new association will contrast to PMPA as it will be based on one member, one vote, with equal equity given to all members. The organisation will also re-invest its profits for the benefit of the group."
The structural arrangement of the shares in Unity meant that the four director companies of PMPA – AToM, BDS, Amity and Complete Mortgages – get 30 per cent; Investec, which is funding Unity, gets 30 per cent; Infinity, part of the Unity set up and also owned by Investec, gets 20 per cent, Jon O’Brien, operations director of PMPA, gets 2.75 per cent, while the remaining 18 members of PMPA share 17.25 per cent, with the four director companies also getting a slice of this share.
However, the shares the 18 members receive are classified as D shares, which mean they are potentially worthless as they come with no voting rights.
Ian Nelson, chairman of the PMPA, played down the dispute. He said: "PMPA is not dissolving and it continues to have a strong core membership. Some members have recently expressed their intention to resign from the organisation, but by no means all the non-founder members."
He also indicated the association is set to recruit new members.
