Santander poised to buy 318 RBS branches
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Spanish banking giant Santander is set to buy 318 of the Royal Bank of Scotland’s high street branches, after all the other bidders dropped out.
RBS is being forced to sell off the branches because of a European Union ruling. The auction is due to end tomorrow, although RBS has until 2013 to find a buyer for the branches.
Santander, which has acquired several hundred Abbey National, Alliance & Leicester and Bradford & Bingley branches last year, is the final bidder after the National Australia Bank dropped out.
According to reports, the Spanish bank is offering between £1.7bn and £1.8bn - well below the £2bn that Santander had initially offered in April.
RBS is 84% owned by the government after public money was used to stop the bank from collapsing at the height of the global financial crisis in 2008.
Santander is currently running an ad campaign backing its Formula One sponsorship of Maclaren and Lewis Hamilton.
Readers' comments (2)
Anonymous | Mon, 14 Jun 2010 12:52 pm
That's a loss of £38 billion bearing in mind we bailed RBS out with over £40 billion of taxpayer money. No wonder this country is in such a financial crisis!
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Anonymous | Mon, 14 Jun 2010 2:02 pm
Hmmm. I don't think the comment is right. I read it was Branches that were being bought...not Bank.
Bearing in mind the Taxpayer is likely to make a good profit on the banks bought over the coming few years I'm not sure anything will be lost...particularly as we printed billions (£175B+?) by the programme of fiscal easing by the bank of England I think the nation's in pretty good nick, even with the deficit (which with the money printing is possibly a surplus, if short term)...
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