Wednesday May 27, 12:15 PM
Santander to rebrand British banking divisions
LONDON (AFP) - Spanish bank Santander (Madrid: SAN.MC - news) said Wednesday that it will merge its British banking divisions Abbey, Alliance & Leicester (LSE: AL.L - news) and Bradford & Bingley under the Santander brand next year.
"All UK businesses will adopt the Santander global brand and name," Europe's second biggest bank said in a statement.
"Abbey, Alliance & Leicester and Bradford & Bingley savings will all become known as Santander by the end of 2010."
Santander hopes to save around 180 million pounds (206 million euros, 288 million dollars) from the integration process. It is spending 12 million pounds in the rebranding, but gave no indication about potential job losses.
In recent years, Santander has expanded rapidly in Britain, where many high-street banks have been savaged by the global financial crisis and credit crunch that erupted in 2007.
Last September, Santander bought part of the assets of troubled British lender Bradford & Bingley for 612 million pounds.
And the bank bought Alliance & Leicester in July in a deal worth 1.26 billion pounds.
That came four years after it acquired British mortgage lender Abbey National in 2004 for 9.2 billion pounds.
The group said Wednesday that Abbey and Bradford & Bingley savings would be rebranded as Santander in the first three months of 2010. Alliance & Leicester will follow by the end of 2010.
"Bringing together the three brands means it will be even easier for customers to manage their finances as they will have access to over 1,300 branches once the change is complete," said Antonio Horta-Osorio, chief executive of Santander's UK businesses, in the statement.
Santander, founded in 1857, is Europe's second biggest bank by stock market capitalization after number one HSBC (LSE: HSBA.L - news) .
The Spanish giant has 90 million customers around the world, operating across 40 countries with a global workforce of 170,000 people. It has 25 million customers in Britain.
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