Quotations
(1) Barclays Bank
Barclays is one of the oldest and most established of the British banks. It was one of the few that escaped having to be bailed out by the British government during the financial crisis, although it did raise a lot of finance from overseas in order to shore up its capital base.
(2) Lloyds Bank
This one grew massively after the financial crisis and swallowed up several other banks, leading to calls that the bank that was very stable had made itself a little too big too quickly and taken on the risky liabilities of some of the others.
(3) Halifax
This was formerly the largest building society before demutualising a long time ago now. It is now actually part of Lloyds, but as mentioned at the top there has been a lot of consolidation and so until it changes its name it deserves a separate mention.
(4) Natwest
Part of RBS, this is another well known bank in the UK although perhaps slightly less well known than some of the other names listed here.
(5) HSBC
This is the bank that seemed to sail through the financial crisis with the least impact. Having a truly international presence and being massive, perhaps it was uniquely placed to ride out the crisis.
(6) Royal Bank of Scotland
The Royal Bank of Scotland was one of the banks that most notably suffered from the financial crisis, and apparently needed the capital injection from the government to shore it up. As some sort of result of that, it is having to sell various parts of its branch network etc to Santander.
(7) Santander
Santander is the name for what used to be Abbey National in the UK, which was bought by Santander several years ago and has fairly recently changed its name to Santander. Soon a lot of the RBS branch network will become Santander too.
(8) Northern Rock
This bank was the one that is most associated with the financial crisis, being the first that went into massive difficulties in the UK and the famous queues of people trying to withdraw their money; the first run on a bank in modern times.
(9) Alliance and Leicester
This is a smaller presence on the high street and used to be a building society too. It is now also part of the Santander group.
(10) Co-operative bank
This is a bank that runs along principled lines, with the emphasis on ethical banking and ethical investing.
