PMPA members kiss and make up

The PMPA members held a crunch meeting yesterday where it was decided a separate entity will be launched which will see all 22 members have equal shares in the company.

Up to 18 members of PMPA were set to leave over disagreements about the shares they own in its lender, Unity Homeloans. It was understood they were to set up their own body - the Association of Mortgage Packagers and Distributors (AMPD).

A dispute over Unity, which was set up by PMPA in October, had resulted in 18 members of the 22 frustrated by the ownership of the lender.

However, one of the PMPA members has informed Mortgage Introducer that this issue was just the catalyst for what has been a long period of disagreement between the members over the running of PMPA.

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.