Alliance & Leicester, Abbey & Bradford & Bingley brands to go.

[Lillehamring]

I work for a large American bank that was bought by another large bank recently, and the merger process is underway with full banking and brand integration to be finished in 2010 or 2011. I don't know much about what's going on behind the scenes at A&L and B&B, but I can assume a lot of employees there are under a lot of pressure.

There may not be massive layoffs in store, but jobs will be eliminated. You won't see this in plain daylight, as most early job losses will be in the offices, not the branches. Santander will not need two or three persons selling the same mortgage rates in the same community. If more than one of the Santander family banks work with the same credit card lender (say, MBNA), then those departments will all be hollowed out and merged into one unit. They'll only need one deparment for everything else that doesn't have to do with sales (for example, operational soundness areas like loss prevention and auditing, marketing, legal).

Keeping all of the branches sounds well and good, but there's too much overlap between each bank's respective footprint for this to be a sound plan for the long term. It doesn't make sense to have branches so close together. Eventually, some of those branches will have to close in order to save costs. Santander are smart not to say this, as the public is already jittery about the current state of banking. And if Santander is a huge, healthy bank that can handle the crap ledger sheets they just bought in the UK, I don't think many people will worry to much about the brand name changes.

mate, it's been like that at A&L since when i was working there as far back as the turn of the century...and they must have got rid of half the work force if not more in the last five years...

[Jordan]

Damn.

[Monk]

I work for a large American bank that was bought by another large bank recently

Who?

Merrill?