ABSTRACT
Over the previous chapters we have seen how companies came to company law through the roots of the law on unincorporated associations, charter and statutory companies and within an ideological and economic context. In this chapter we will present a historical and critical account of how building societies came to company law. The distinguishing characteristic of building societies that are not companies is that they are mutual societies. The legal mechanism by which they cease to be mutual societies is known as demutualisation or conversion. However, as we shall see, mutuality is an attribute that originated as a response to a particular set of social and economic imperatives and was subsequently moulded by ideology and economics. Thus the shedding of mutual status is part of a historical process which was completed for the most part by the end of the twentieth century and is best understood in a contextual analysis.
