Five things you need to know about the Myners Co-op report

The Myners Report into the Co-operative Group (pdf) has been published today, and it doesn’t make for pleasant reading. Following the discovery of a £1.5 billion black hole in their finances, followed by the Paul Flowers ‘crystal Methodist’ scandal, the Co-op commissioned the former City Minister Paul Myners to look into the group’s problems and put together a restructuring plan to make it sustainable and properly governed. Here are the key things you need to know from the 180-page report:

1. The Co-op group is still ‘manifestly dysfunctional’

Lord Myners is not impressed with the current state of the Co-op Group and warns it needs to radically change ‘soon’ or face breaking up. The report suggests there are still ‘deplorable governance failures’ and that the board is ‘still stuck in denial over this near ruinous failure of governance’. The scale of the change required to reshape the group is significant and throughout the report, Myners hints he isn’t confident the group will accept the speed and scale of reshaping necessary.