Historic B&B name to disappear in rebrand

THE historic Bradford & Bingley name is to disappear from the high street after its Spanish owner announced it would use its own brand name instead.

Santander will also kill off its other UK brands Abbey and Alliance & Leicester by the end of next year.

The disappearing British banking names date back as far as 1851.

Abbey and the B&B’s savings business, snapped up by Santander in 2004 and 2008 respectively, will be the first to go, between January and March next year.

A&L will follow later in 2010, according to Santander.

But it will begin introducing the Santander brand this year, by changing over Abbey credit cards under the group name, as well as the commercial and corporate banking arms of Abbey and A&L, which include 20 regional banking centres.

Bradford and Bingley’s logo featuring silhouetted city gents in bowler hats, was one of the most instantly recognised in the financial sector.

Its “Mr Bradford and Mr Bingley” advertisements in the Seventies and Eighties made it a household name far beyond its Yorkshire roots.

In 1995, it forced Virgin to ditch a national advertising campaign which it claimed poked fun at Mr Bradford and Mr Bingley.

Santander took over B&B’s savings accounts and branches, and the government took control of its mortgages and loans, following the bank’s collapse last year in a sea of bad debts.

Before Bradford & Bingley was listed on the London Stock Exchange in December 2000, it was one of Britain’s best known building societies.

The bowler-hatted characters were a nod to the 1964 merger which amalgamated the Bradford Equitable Building Society and the Bingley Building Society into the Bradford & Bingley.

The two West Yorkshire building societies were initially established in 1851 to help local people build a better future for themselves by paying in money which could be used to give loans to others within the community, often to buy a home.

The Bradford and the Bingley – which were already working together to protect themselves from the competition – formally amalgamated in 1964, becoming the nation’s eighth largest building society.

Antonio Horta-Osorio, chief executive of Santander’s UK business, said customers would benefit from access to all of the group’s 1,300-branch network after the rebrand is complete.

Santander is spending £12m on the rebrand, although it is aiming to save £180m from integrating the three businesses.

Around 1,900 jobs have already gone as part of its efforts to combine the acquired banks.

Mr Horta-Osorio said customer feedback had shown support for the Santander brand in the UK.

“Customers trust us as a global brand and they feel very safe about their savings,” he said.

“It’s important for customers who travel around the UK to have 1,300 branches to transact with – and they will have the same product and the same people facing them in the branches,” he said.

Santander is now the UK’s second biggest mortgage lender and third largest savings bank following last year’s dramatic move to snap up the savings and branch operation of collapsed B&B in October, just a month after its rescue takeover of A&L.

The Government nationalised B&B’s £50 billion loan book, which remains in State ownership and is unaffected by the Santander rebrand.