Santander is being mentioned increasingly in business circles as a willing lender north of the border, at a time when HBOS owner Lloyds Banking Group and RBS have been rebuilding their balance sheets with massive Government support in the wake of billions of pounds of writedowns.
Bank of Scotland parent HBOS and RBS have been dominant forces in the Scottish corporate banking market for years.
Highlighting the opportunity which he believes these banks’ current difficulties are providing for Santander to build its corporate and commercial banking business in Scotland, Glasgow-based Marshall told The Herald his employer was “in at a good time”.
He said: “If we had tried to do this a couple of years ago … other banks had tried the Scottish market and gone away again. RBS and HBOS had squeezed them out in terms of margin and pricing.”
Lloyds Banking Group, which was formed in January with completion of Lloyds TSB’s rescue takeover of HBOS, and RBS have had to be supported with tens of billions of pounds of taxpayer funds.
Both are going through massive restructuring. Lloyds Banking Group is 43%-owned by the UK Government. The taxpayer’s effective stake in RBS is rising to 84% with the latest £25.5 billion injection of capital into this institution, which comes on top of £20bn provided already.
The Santander commercial and corporate banking operations in Scotland employ 12 people – double the number at the start of the year. This division serves businesses with an annual turnover of between £1m and £1bn.
Marshall, who joined Santander from Glasgow-based Clydesdale Bank, said: “I am talking to a lot of businesses that are pretty jaded by the attitude of their existing bank.”
Marshall said Santander was willing to give its customers the “bad news and good news and a bit of advice”.
He added: “I think we are in at a good time because there are still an awful lot of good businesses out there. We have been successful in re-banking a few.”
Marshall expressed surprise that the existing bankers of some of the businesses which had been re-banked by Santander had not competed harder to retain these customers.
Signalling a belief that there are many open doors for Santander, he said: “There is more willingness in the business community to look at re-banking or joint banking. A lot of customers don’t want to rely on one bank any more.”
Marshall emphasised that there was “no sector” of the economy which Santander would not look at within its corporate banking business.
Santander, which has expanded significantly in the UK in recent years through the acquisition of Abbey National, Bradford & Bingley, and Alliance & Leicester operations, has not provided any numbers relating to growth of its corporate banking customer base or lending book in Scotland.
However, Marshall said: “We have taken business from every Scottish bank so far.”
He added that Santander had, in Scotland, recruited staff for its corporate and commercial banking business from RBS, Lloyds, and the recently-troubled Dunfermline Building Society.
Marshall said: “Although these institutions are having problems, there are still some very good people working for those businesses.”
Jonathan Dyer, who leads Santander’s “regional” corporate banking team in Northern England, Scotland, and Northern Ireland, noted that the Spanish bank was targeting at least 10% of the UK corporate and commercial banking market by 2012. He said, at the moment, Santander had a market share of 1.5% to 2%.
Dyer emphasised Santander’s focus on relationship banking.
Clydesdale is being cited in business circles as a still-enthusiastic lender to companies in Scotland. Clydesdale, owned by National Australia Bank, has been hit far less hard by the global financial crisis and deep recession than RBS and Lloyds.
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