Santander - who are we?

Today, Santander is one of the largest financial groups
in the world.

Through its subsidiaries, Santander has large scale operations throughout Europe, Latin America and the United States of America. It is the sixth largest financial institution in the world by market capitalization and has the world's largest network of branches. Santander has over 90 million customers worldwide.

On 15th November 2009, we marked the fifth anniversary of the acquisition of Abbey, and we have recently marked two further important anniversaries in the UK for the Santander Group, as it has been one year since both Alliance & Leicester and Bradford & Bingley joined the Group.

Earlier in the year, Santander announced its intention to change the name of its UK banks to 'Santander' in 2010. The integration of the three businesses is on track and in January 2010, Abbey and Bradford & Bingley will officially rebrand to Santander. This will be followed later in the year by Alliance & Leicester.

The combination of the three UK businesses is a powerful one, and our increased distribution across more than 1,300 branches has seen us deliver a strong uplift in revenues, substantially outperforming our peers. This is good news for both customers and shareholders.

Today, Santander is the bank with the world's largest shareholder base of 3.1 million in total and continues to pay strong cash dividends, despite the difficult economic climate.

For more financial information about the Santander Group, including reports and announcements, please click here.