Court order granted to transfer A&L business

14 May 2010

Alliance & Leicester plc ("A&L") and Santander UK plc ("Santander")

Court Order granted to transfer A&L's business to Santander

On 13 May 2010, the High Court of Justice granted a Court Order approving the transfer of A&L's business to Santander. Under the terms of the Court Order the Transfer will become effective at 00.01 hours on 28 May 2010.

The Transfer will provide benefits for customers and Santander. For customers this includes access to Santander's full product range plus use of over 1,300 Santander branches in the UK, four times as many branches as currently available for A&L customers.

By rationalising systems and improving the sales and risk management processes through having a single view of customers' dealings with the bank, Santander will now benefit from the significant synergies that were announced to the market at the time of the A&L acquisition in 2008.

A&L currently holds a separate banking licence to Santander. If customers hold deposits with both banks they are covered under the Financial Services Compensation Scheme for both A&L and Santander savings. This means they could currently claim a maximum of up to £100,000 under the FSCS (or £200,000 in the case of joint accounts) as they can claim up to £50,000 against each organisation.

Once the transfer of A&L's business to Santander becomes effective (00.01 hours on 28 May 2010) all deposits will fall under Santander, and therefore the cover available from FSCS will reduce to £50,000 (or £100,000 in the case of joint accounts).

Ends

Enquiries to:

Matthew Young, Communications Director 020 7756 4232

Anthony Frost, Head of Corporate Communications 020 7756 5536