Spain's Santander makes offer for 300 RBS branches

Santander - which already owns Alliance & Leicester, Abbey and some Bradford & Bingley accounts - will own one in eight bank branches in the UK if the bid succeeds.

Markets

Other markets

Market Data Notice

More market charts

by Deborah Hyde on Jun 18, 2010 at 09:00

Spain's Santander makes offer for 300 RBS branches

Spanish banking group Santander confirmed it has made an offer for around 300 Royal Bank of Scotland branches.

Shares added 0.5p, or 1.07%, to 47.2p on the news.

The EU competition commission said last year Royal Bank of Scotland - 83% owned by the UK taxpayer - must sell assets as a condition of EU approval for government bailout money.

Santander recently rebranded its Abbey and Bradford & Bingley businesses and will rebrand Alliance & Leicester branches later this year.

Buying the RBS branches would give Santander 1,645 branches, or 12% of the market, according to Reuters.

The Spanish group is understood to be the only remaining bidder for the branches after National Australia Bank pulled out of the auction last week and Spanish group BBVA decided against an offer.

Yesterday, RBS sold its Kazakhstan retail business to HSBC for $52 million.

Email a friend

Email me when someone comments on this article Print

7 comments so far. Why not have your say?

"Shares added 5p, or 1.07%, to 47.2p on the news."

I think the maths needs checking out here Deborah !

report this

This is where economics and finance completely confuse me. Spain's economy is in danger of following Greece into complete oblivion, banks are closing or having to be bailed out and the largest bank is apparently awash with funds to be able to buy out masses of UK financial institutions. Can someone explain to a complete thicko

report this

Spanish banks were protected from foreign competition by Franco’s orders until the late sixties. They also enjoyed a relative lack of competition within Spain and became extremely profitable during the ‘boom’ years of EU funding. Santander’s boss, Emilio Botín has made some extremely shrewd moves over the years and Santander is easily Spain’s top company. As for the rest of Spain we, as residents, can only wait and pray.......

report this

.......because Spain made it illegal to trade in the debts that our Government allowed........

report this

I have an ISA and a Bank account with Santander. I only really wanted the ISA but was forced to have the account. I now have two bank cards from them as well. When I received a letter from them last week I phoned the number on the letter with a query. They could not identify my account from the account number on the letter........ Personally I wish they would just pee off back to Spain.

Be warned!!!!

report this

........because Spain made it illegal FOR SPANISH BANKS to trade in the debts that our Government allowed our banks to do.........(sorry for missing bit!)

report this

Chris Kenney

Jun 18, 2010 at 18:13

Do you all think that Santander use Deborah`s percentage calculations?

report this

Please sign in here or register here to comment. It is free to register and only takes a minute or two.