Quick Stats

Type – Subsidiary
Industry – Finance and Insurance
Founded – 2010 (London, United Kingdom)
Headquarters – United Kingdom London, England, UK
Key people – Lord Burns, Chairman
António Horta-Osório, CEO
Products – Financial Services
Employees – 20,000+
Parent – Grupo Santander

Brief History

In 2004, the Spanish Santander acquired Abbey National for £9bn. As a result of the 2008 banking crisis, Abbey purchased the savings business and branches of Bradford & Bingley in September 2008 following the nationalisation of B&B by HM Government. The purchase of Alliance & Leicester by Santander had been agreed earlier that month.

Santander UK plc was formed by the renaming of Abbey National plc which also included the branch network and savings business of Bradford & Bingley plc on 11 January 2010. Alliance & Leicester plc merged into the bank on the 28th May 2010, and rebranding is expected by the end of November 2010.

The bank retained the London headquarters of Abbey National and renamed other regional buildings under its own name.

The Abbey name was retained for Abbey International and Abbey for Intermediaries, a division of the bank offering Abbey branded mortgages provided by Santander UK plc.

Subsidiaries

Santander Bank has got several subsidiaries including the following:

• Abbey for Intermediaries
• Abbey International
• Alliance & Leicester
• Alliance & Leicester International
• Bradford & Bingley International
• Cahoot
• Cater Allen

Recent News

Santander launched the UK’s first current account without fees (including unauthorised overdrafts) for its current and future mortgage customers.

As well, all Santander customers are levied no fees when using Santander’s ATM machines in Spain, thus “avoiding the usual fees for taking out cash or for doing so in a foreign currency”.

The bank merged the charitable sections of Abbey, Bradford & Bingley and Alliance & Leicester together as the Santander Foundation.

On 4 August 2010 it was confirmed that Santander had purchased the ex-Williams & Glyn’s Bank branded English branches of the Royal Bank of Scotland Group, as well as the National Westminster Bank branches in Scotland after much speculation. This move could also lead to Santander UK taking a minority 25% listing on the London Stock Exchange, returning Abbey, Bradford & Bingley and Alliance & Leicester back to the FTSE 100 as part of the UK business.