The planned acquisition of Virgin Money by Nationwide Building Society worth £2.9 billion has passed a significant hurdle after receiving overwhelming support from the cooperative's members at the annual general meeting.

More than 600,000 voters supported the board of Nationwide at the annual general meeting on Wednesday, with each resolution – including the re-election of the board and the directors' pay packages – receiving approvals of around 95 percent or more.

The general meeting was seen as a potential hurdle to the takeover, as activists had urged members to vote against all resolutions in protest of Nationwide's decision not to put the takeover to a separate member vote. Although the members were not specifically supposed to vote on the deal, the general meeting was seen as a vote of confidence in the company's leadership.

Approximately 95 percent of voters also approved tripling the maximum long-term bonus of Nationwide CEO Debbie Crosbie to £3.4 million. The chair of the remuneration committee, Tracey Graham, said that Crosbie's salary is "significantly below" that of her peers at other banks and in the lower range of the FTSE 100.

The meeting on Wednesday, which took place online, was accessible to the 16 million members of Nationwide who are considered customers with a checking or savings account or a mortgage. As a building society, Nationwide is owned by its customers rather than shareholders.

The takeover of Virgin Money, which will be the largest merger of a British bank since the financial crisis, is expected to make Nationwide the second-largest provider of mortgages and savings accounts and give it a position in the business customer segment.

In the last financial year, Crosbie received a salary of 3.5 million pounds, including compensation of 1.7 million pounds for a bonus she lost when leaving the competing bank TSB.

The members also overwhelmingly approved a series of governance changes, including giving the Nationwide chairman the ability to adjourn meetings, removing a 70-year age limit for directors, and abolishing a rule that disqualifies directors with mental illnesses.

Mikael Armstrong, who is leading the membership campaign for the vote on the takeover, pointed to an 'increase in member dissatisfaction with the leadership of Nationwide,' which he believes indicates the 'displeasure of the members.'

Despite the slight increase, the dissenting votes represented only a small portion of the members. Nationwide Chairman Kevin Parry said that fewer than 200 people participated in the online general meeting.

Armstrong, who claims to have been "debunked" by Nationwide in March, collected more than 5,000 signatures for a petition calling on the building society to give its members a say in the purchase of Virgin Money.

Protesters have been arguing for months that Nationwide is acting 'against the democratic ethos of a cooperative society' and that it is not clear that customers would be better off after the deal.

Nationwide has insisted that it has no legal obligation to put the deal to a vote, and Crosbie told the Financial Times in May that only a "tiny minority" of customers are against the plan.

Regarding Armstrong's "debanking" claim, the building society said that it complies with its legal and regulatory obligations and "is not aware of any case where accounts have been closed solely due to political statements or opinions.

Nationwide would never and has never debanked anyone solely on the basis of their legal views," Crosbie told the members.