Grupo Santander is a banking group centered on Banco Santander. It is the largest bank in the Europe and one of the largest banks in the world in terms of market capitalisation. In 1999 Banco Santander and Banco Central Hispano megered and created Banco Santander Central Hispano (BSCH). The 1999 merger between Santander and Banco Central Hispano (BCH) was designed to be a merger of equals in which the top executives of the two companies would share control of the merged entity. Soon after the merger the BCH executives accused the Banco executive Mr.

Botin of trying to push his own agenda and threatened to take legal action against him.This post-merger squabbling was resolved when the two BCH executives agreed to accept severance payments, retire and relinquish control to Mr. Botin, at an expense to shareholders of 164m euros. The large termination pay-outs generated negative media for the business and Mr. Botin.

He was eventually brought to trial on criminal charges of misappropriation of funds and irresponsible management. However, in 2005 he was cleared of all charges. The verdict said the 164m euros retirement payments made to the two former executives were legal, made as compensation for the services provided to the bank.In 2005 the anti-corruption division of the Spanish public prosecutor's office cleared Mr.

Botin of all charges in a separate case in which he was accused of insider trading. The revenue Santander made in 2009 was 39. 38 billion euros and the profit they made was 8. 943 billion euros. They have 169,460 employees which makes them second largest bank in Europe.

Alliance ; Leicester is a UK based bank. It was formed in 1985 when two businesses merged the Alliance Building Society and Leicester Building Society. They became a bank in 1997 when it floated on the London Stock Exchange.They offered mortgage lending, investment, persona banking, commercial banking and treasury. The headquarters of Alliance and Leicester is in Narborough, UK. The former building society was formed by the merger of the Alliance Building Society (originally based in and called the Brighton ; Sussex) and the Leicester Building Society on 1985.

In 1990, the society acquired Girobank, a major provider of cash-handling services to the government and large companies and current accounts, from the Post Office. Organisational Change On 2008 Grupo Santander took over the UK bank Alliance ; Leicester with ? 4bn and 254 branches.After the Santander took over the Alliance ; Leicester Plc was delisted from the London Stock Exchange. Grupo Santander also took over UK bank Bradford and Bingley and Abbey National Plc. After these four companies merged they came under the new name Santander UK Plc. Santander now has 1,300 branches in UK.

Santander is the only bank which has an unusual position of having more than one branch in many high streets. Santander has started charitable sections of Abbey, Bradford ; Bingley and Alliance ; Leicester called Santander Foundation.In 2010 Santander purchased the ex-Williams ; Glyn’s Bank which is English branches for the RSB group and also the National Westminster Bank branches of Scotland. This has given Santander the minority of 25% listing on the London Stock Exchange.

Santander is hoping to expand their business by purchasing more banks all over Europe. They are already considering purchasing the Allied Irish Bank branches in UK and the SEB’s (Skandinavisha Enskilda Banken) German branches for 555m euros (? 466. 5m).Santander hopes to get return in their investment of about 19% by 2011, with Alliance ; Leicester having 5. million customers and 254 branches in the UK.

Alliance ; Leicester, Abbey has adopted the Santander’s leadership strategy and have already proved that the strategy is successful. The previous management was lacking of career progression. Now they are working hard at this problem and using the help of management they are improving career progression. Santander has identified and has given more importance for senior leaders which can bring more experience into the business. They are trying to train and retain the next management which constitutes the next generation of leadership.Lower levels of managements are being continuously rewarded and incentivised to remain with Abbey and Alliance ; Leicester.

The decisions are coming from the Santander’s headquarters which is in Madrid for Santander. For Abbey the decisions are being made by the Caroline Curtis, head of the abbey Talent, and Development and Performance team who discuss and work closely with Headquarters in Madrid. Using Santander’s management strategy Alliance ; Leicester, Abbey are all trying to improve their management and leadership?After the merger the organisational structure of Alliance ; Leicester, Abbey and B;B have change. There have been some cuts of staff because of the merge which have affected the management structure of the company. Even though there was a huge cuts of staff with Abbey, there only few cuts with Alliance and Leicester.

The organisational structure of Santander and Alliance ; Leicester all have changed because decision made by Alliance ; Leicester, Abbey still have to be discussed with the Headquarters of Santander.Currently Alliance and Leicester are taking power culture because they are still not out of the recession and only using a power culture they will be able to improve their results and also achieve their current goals such as improving their management and leadership skills. They also use achievement and support culture to their benefit by using achievement culture they have got good results at this difficult time. They have used the support culture as well to support themselves and the parent company. They are using support culture to help each department in Alliance and Leicester to improve the overall result of the business.