Santander owns one fifth of mortgages in the UK

February 12, 2011 by Brendan O'Neill

News

This month, Spanish bank Santander has announced its profits for 2010. Despite the fall in gross lending that most UK mortgage lenders have also seen, the bank has grown by 11 percent in comparison with 2009.

One reason for such growth is the acquisitions of other prominent UK lenders, such as Abbey and Alliance & Leicester.
Overall, the figures show that the Spanish bank is now the lender for approximately one fifth of all the UK mortgages at the moment.

Gross home loan lending dropped from the 2009 figure of £26.4 billion by more than 2 billion to £24.2 billion last year. The bank’s overall net lending also dropped by a similar figure from 2009’s £7.6 billion to £5.5 billion in 2010. With other British banks due to report their 2010 profits later this month, it will be interesting to compare the figures.

Santander’s UK chief executive, Ana Botín commented that the future main aims for the bank in the UK is to increase its business lending and open new branches in order to create more jobs and to serve its customers better.

Commenting on the bank’s performance, its chief executive in the UK, Ms. Ana Botín, said that Santander’s major aim is to expand lending to business and to open new offices, creating jobs and serving customers better.

In other news, Santander is expected to float its UK proposition on the London stock exchange later this year and looks set to be the largest Initial Public Offering (IPO) the stock exchange has seen since 2007.