It doesn't mean Dunfermline jobs are safe

With the government refusing a bailout and a local consortium failing in its bid, Dunfermline's white knight is the UK's biggest building society, Nationwide. Key to the success of the deal was Nationwide's promise to keep hold of 300 jobs in Scotland.

After a week of speculation of whether the government would step in to prevent the building society's collapse or if a Scottish consortium could get the cash together to save it, Nationwide has agreed to take it over.

The "good" bits of Dunfermline are being underwritten by the government to the tune of 1.6bn. The building society is thought to have around 1bn in toxic assets.

The clincher for the Nationwide deal was that it will avoid making any redundancies at on the high street for at least three years, ensuring that 300 jobs at 34 branches are safe, according to the Times.

Good news, right? Well, yes, but that doesn't mean that job cuts are entirely out of the picture. Overlaps are likely to occur among the two companies and redundancies are expected in Dunfermline's Fife head office. Around 230 people are employed there.

Similarly, it's unlikely that the back office operations of both building societies will survive in their present form and a proportion of the Dunfermline team is probably going to face the axe.

Adrian Coles, director general of the Building Society Association, insists that Dunfermline is an isolated case that there's not about to be a string of collapses.