Welcome! They don’t, unfortunately.
1 Like
Thanks so much. That rules them out for me then 
2 Likes
Firewalled unfortunately.
If it’s true, it’d surely be a slow process, given the size of their customer base.
Wouldn’t bank on that. Neither Nationwide nor Coventry took overly long nor did previous sales e.g. National Australian’s sale of Clydesdale, Yorkshire, and Northern banks. None were firesales.
In what regard are Nationwide & Coventry similar to Santander?
I’m probably at a disadvantage but I can’t read the article.
Unpaywalled: https://archive.is/Fcue9
Not sure there’s a queue of buyers for a bank Santander’s size tbh, if they do decide to dispose of it the most likely mechanic would be to rebrand (Abbey?) and float it.
2 Likes
Thankyou.
The other references at the foot of that article tell me there’s been a lot of Santander news that I’d missed.
I’m a very modest Santander customer who’s recently shifted all cash & savings so I’ve no skin in this game (street talk !).
I was meaning their takeovers of Virgin and CoOp and the National Australian sale a while back were similar in scale and none of those took very long. Merging the operations is a different matter, of course.
1 Like
NAB didn’t sell CYBG, they floated it - like LBG did with TSB.
I don’t think there is a UK suitor with both a wallet that could stretch to buying Santander and a size of the market small enough that a takeover would not result in competition concerns. That leaves the viable exit routes as either selling to an international company looking to get a foothold in the UK market (which would be pretty ironic given Santander’s “problem”!) or a floatation.
The last potentially consumable high street bank is TSB.
2 Likes
Forgot about that. They did sell the Northern Bank which was bought by Danske.
That’s true, although a much smaller bank and a very different time politically and economically.
Apparently they’ve been having discussions about selling their UK business to Barclays but couldn’t agree a price. Sounds like their more serious than initially presented by the UK media.
It would have likely been a good fit for Nationwide if they hadn’t already acquired VM.
Interesting. Wouldn’t rule out Nationwide as they have had multiple takeovers on the go simultaneously in the past, albeit much simpler ones.
Yorkshire might be interested as they are now the only one of the top 3 building societies without a current account.
V much doubt YBS, or any other building society for that, have sufficient reserves to acquire Santander UK.
Nationwide possibly could afford it but I doubt the competition commission would be happy with the resulting market share. Maybe if they hadn’t acquired Clydesdale.
1 Like
There would be a CMA enquiry, but the combo would move to being one of the big five. No particularly large shares in mortgages or deposits. In fact, various people have pushed for a proper challenger ‘bank’ over the years, and this would fit the bill.
What are you basing this on? So far as I can see acquiring Santander would make Nationwide Group the biggest mortgage lender by some considerable margin. No doubt similar would be true of deposits.
They wouldn’t be a challenger, they’d have a controlling share of the market. They’d have to break something off.
2 Likes
As far as I can see Nationwide have about 12%, as do Santander, with Virgin at 3%. So combo around 27%.
Not start-up challenger, but of a size and capability to challenge Barclays, NatWest where others never have been.
Pushing yourself to distant first place via a takeover is not remotely the behaviour of a “challenger”.
It’s been a very long time since I’ve heard any form of government encouragement for “challenger banks” in any case. It was largely used as a slight of hand in the years after the financial crisis to make the casual listener believe that banks were being reprimanded and/or broken up for misbehaviour.
1 Like
Glad I left. Might not exist soon 
1 Like