This study adds to the accounting history literature by looking at features common to major defalcations in two small-sized building societies (namely the Wakefield and the Grays). These features were the dominance of an individual over a building society’s systems, and poor systems of...

This paper examines how accounting-based regulation modified the operation of one type of participant in British retail finance. Specifically, the House Purchase and Housing Act, 1959 and Building Societies Act, 1960 gave the Registrar of Friendly Societies new powers of intervention and these...