Type – Trading Name
Industry – Finance and insurance
Founded – 1853
Headquarters – Halifax, West Yorkshire, England
Products – Financial services
Parent – Lloyds Banking Group
Website – www.halifax.co.uk

Before 17 September 2007, Halifax was a separate bank. It was previously the UK’s largest building society, known as the Halifax Building Society. The Halifax Building Society demutualised in 1997 becoming Halifax plc and later merged with The Governor and Company of the Bank of Scotland to form the holding company HBOSplc . In 2006, the HBOS Group Reorganisation Act 2006 transferred the assets and liabilities of Halifax plc to Bank of Scotland plc. Halifax then became a trading name of Bank of Scotland. On 19 January 2009, Bank of Scotland became part of Lloyds Banking Group.

On 16 October 2009, Halifax Estate Agency was sold to LSL for a fee of £1. The branches are to be renamed as one of LSL’s existing brands

Brief Halifax History

The Halifax was formed in 1853 as the The Halifax Permanent Benefit Building and Investment Society. The idea was thought up in a meeting room situated above The Old Cock Inn close to the original Building Society building.

Unlike many UK building societies which grew large by acquisitions and mergers, the Society choose an organic form of growth, and proceeded to open branches throughout the UK. By 1913, it was the largest building society in the UK. The first office in London opened in 1924; and the first offices in Scotland in 1928.

In 1928, it merged with Halifax Equitable Building Society, then the second largest building society and was renamed Halifax Building Society. The Society was now five times larger than its nearest rival, with assets of £47 million. A new Head Office was built at Trinity Road, Halifax in 1973.

The 1986 Act also allowed building societies to demutualise, and become public limited companies instead of mutually owned organisations, owned by the customers who borrowed and saved with the society.

In 1995, the Halifax announced it was to merge with the Leeds Permanent Building Society and convert to a plc. The Halifax floated on the London Stock Exchange on 2 June 1997. Over 7.5 million customers of the Society became shareholders of the new bank, the largest extension of shareholders in UK history.

As Halifax plc, the new bank was the fifth largest in the UK in terms of market capitalisation. Further expansion took place with the 1996 acquisition of Clerical Medical Fund Managers, a UK life insurance company. In 1999, the Halifax acquired the Birmingham Midshires Building Society and ComparetheLoan. In 2000, Halifax established Intelligent Finance, a telephone and internet based bank.
Formation of HBOS

In 2001, a wave of consolidation in the UK banking market led Halifax to agree a £10.8 billion merger with the Bank of Scotland. The new group was named Halifax Bank of Scotland (HBOS) with headquarters in Edinburgh, but retaining both Halifax and the Bank of Scotland as brand names. However in Scotland, Halifax branches were amalgamated with the Bank of Scotland, and the Halifax brand is now only used for branding mortgages and savings products.

HBOS was acquired by the Lloyds Banking Group in January 2009 amid falling share price and speculation as to its future. The group was thought to have been heavily leveraged with “toxic debt”. Bank of Scotland plc and all its brands including Halifax became a wholly owned subsidiary of the Group.