Grupo Santander

The Santander Group is a Spanish banking group centered on Banco Santander, S.A. (Spanish: and is the largest bank in the Eurozone by market value. It is one of the largest banks in the world in terms of market capitalization. As its name suggests, the company originated in Santander, Cantabria ^Spain
The group has expanded in recent years through a number of acquisitions, with operations across Europe, Latin America, North America and Asia. Many subsidiaries, such as Abbey National, have been rebranded under the Santander name.
In April 2013, Santander was ranked as 43rd in the Forbes Global 2000 list of the world's largest companies.

History

Early history

The National Freehold Land Society, officially named the National Permanent Mutual Benefit Building Society to give it legal existence under the Building Societies Act 1836, was established by two Liberal members of parliament, Sir Joshua Walmsley and Richard Cobden, in 1849, joined a year later by John Bright. In 1856, it formed the British Land Company, which separated in 1878. Meanwhile, the Abbey Road & St. John's Wood Permanent Benefit Building Society was founded in 1874, based in a Baptist church on Abbey Road in Kilburn. In 1932 the society moved into new headquarters, Abbey House, at 219–229 Baker Street, London, which it occupied until 2002. The site was thought to include 221B Baker Street, the fictional home of Sherlock Holmes, and for many years Abbey employed a secretary charged with answering mail sent to Holmes at that address.
The Abbey National Building Society was formed following the merger in 1944 of what had become Abbey Road Building Society (already the second largest) and National Building Society (at the time the sixth largest). The Swansea Thrift Permanent transferred engagements in 1949, followed by the Definite Permanent in 1968, The State Building Society in 1970, Highgate Building Society in 1974 and the Oak Co-operative in 1979.
During the 1970s and 1980s, Abbey National gained a reputation for innovation and, sometimes disruptive, change. It was an early user of computer systems and in the late 1970s, all branches became on-line to a real-time system that maintained customer accounts. Under Chief general manager Clive Thornton, new types of savings accounts were introduced as well as a cheque account. The administration of the cheque account was restricted by building society rules and the need to find a partner that could clear Abbey's cheques (The Co-operative Bank). Later, Abbey became a full member of the Bankers' Automated Clearing Services (BACS) and the former Association for Payment Clearing Services (APACS). Thornton also acted to break the building societies' interest rate consensus.

Demutualisation

The Abbey National Building Society became the first of the UK building societies to demutualise, and became a public limited company as Abbey National plc on 12 July 1989. It was floated on the London Stock Exchange at £1.30 per share, resulting in an unusually large number of small shareholders – approximately 1.8 million initially. The demutualisation process was marred by the discovery of a large number of undelivered share certificates awaiting destruction at a contractor's premises.
Abbey National shares peaked at more than £14 in 2000, before the stock market began a long
  decline.

Development

In 1994, Abbey National purchased James Hay, one of the UK's foremost independent providers of self-administered pensions. James Hay then went on to grow in straight and launched Abbey Wrap, the first Wrap a service in which IFA’s can keep the clients ISA’s, Peps, Offshore bonds and SIPP in one place. Abbey Wrap Managers was FSA approved in 2003. This was relaunched as James Hay Wrap in 2005.
In February 1995 Abbey National Baring Derivatives were taken down along with Barings Bank due to failures in regulation and control, especially in regards to Nick Leeson of Barings Bank.
Two life assurance companies were demutualised and acquired, Scottish Mutual in 1992 and Scottish Provident in 2001, which enabled Abbey to pursue the bancassurance model.
In August 1996, Abbey National took over the National & Provincial Building Society, which was itself the product of a 1982 merger between the Provincial Building Society and the Burnley Building Society. This merger increased Abbey National's branch network by almost two hundred branches and brought in three million more customers.
In April 2000 Abbey bought Porterbrook from Stagecoach Group for £773 million. Porterbrook was one of the three railway rolling stock operating companies created from by the privatisation of British Rail, leasing rolling stock to the UK train operating companies.
The bank launched its online bank, Cahoot, in June 2000.
Lloyds TSB attempted to merge with the bank in 2001, though that was ultimately rejected by the Competition Commission.
Abbey also ventured into the wholesale loans business. At first this provided a good profit stream, despite the criticisms of some analysts. This eventually undid the company, however, when Enron turned out to be unsafe and the 11 September attacks in New York damaged confidence in various financial areas. From this point, Abbey struggled from financial losses and a tarnished image. The chief executive, Ian Harley, a long-time Abbey employee, resigned and his post was filled by an outsider, Luqman Arnold.
Arnold spearheaded a major reorganisation of the bank in September 2003 that also saw the brand name shortened to Abbey, the abbey.com domain name launched and the Abbey National umbrella logo dropped. Banking literature was also simplified as part of the programme, labelled 'turning banking on its head'.