pill clauses in their rules as a defense against carpetbaggers. These took the form of a charitable assignment provision that requires new members to assign any compensation from demutualization to charity. Membership associations The UK motorists' organization, The Automobile Association, demutualized and was purchased by Centrica plc in 1999. The sale was completed in July 2000 for £1.1 billion. Retail consumers' cooperatives As well as the many agricultural supply cooperatives that demutualized, a small number of general retail consumer's cooperatives have demutualized or considered demutualization. In 1997, Andrew Regan launched an unsuccessful hostile takeover bid to demutualize the UK's giant Co-operative Wholesale Society, which, despite its name, was a large retailer in its own right. In 2007, the tiny Scottish retailer, Musselburgh and Fisherrow Co-operative Society, completed most or all of the steps necessary to demutualize. In 2008, a Swiss competition regulator recommended demutualization to Switzerland's leading supermarket chains, Coop and Migros. Retailers' co-operatives Irish grocer-owned retailers' cooperative, ADM Londis, changed its capital structure in 2004 to an unlisted public limited company, allowing its owners to trade its stock privately at market value. See also Carpetbagger (United Kingdom) Corporatization Financial institution Mutual insurance Privatization Thatcherism References Notes John W. Carson, Conflicts of Interest in Self-Regulation Andreas M. Fleckner, Stock Exchanges at the Crossroads External links The Feeling's Not Mutual An Analysis of Governor Pataki's Proposed Mutual Holding Company Legislation (New York State Assembly, 1998) Reorganization Status of Mutual Life Insurance Companies (USA) Co-operative Issues – Demutualisation – International Co-operative Alliance – Analysis after the last of the UK's demutualized building societies lost its independence How the nation's largest mutual life insurers - MetLife, New York Life, Principal Mutual and others - attempted to make off with $100 billion of policyholders' money by creating "Mutual Holding Companies". And how they were stopped. Cooperatives Corporate finance