'Buy British in banking?' blog discussion

eponline

For the record, I beleive HSBC are actually fairly British, despite the name.

HSBC were set up as a British company operating out of Hong Kong to help British companies facilitate trade with Chinese companies. They later took over Midland bank who were also British and adopted the branches, logo, etc. Originally it was a similar set up to someone like Standard Chartered Bank, who have no real presence in the UK but are a totally British company nonetheless.

The shareholders are mostly British, the head office is Canary Wharf, the IT platforms and major systems are UK based (Sheffield). To be honest you'd be hard pressed to find a more British bank of a similar scale.

(Yes, I used to work for HSBC!)

torbrex

One point that springs to mind, would it cause Santander any trouble if everyone in Britain withdrew all their money at the same time from their 'British' banks?

hwykes

I think this is a very good discussion Martin. I have to say that a lot of people think about "British" with some sort of emotion and therefore fail to be rational when it comes to their own economic interests. If you rationally think about it, we should be buying whoever offers the best value balanced against the risk. The trouble with British businesses struggle to be competitive with extortionate British labour costs. I do like the patriotism displayed here about "buying British" but such naivity in my view is what lets British businesses make suckers out of their customers. People need to realise that these may be "British" (if at all given ownership structures) but before that they are businesses who need to make a profit.

sanbikinoraion

As Wenyi said, if we all only bought British, and everyone else did the same, we'd be stuffed!

Global trade has made all of us phenomenally richer than we would have been if we'd simply been 'self sufficient', which is why I'm wary when any politician claims on the telly that we should be self-sufficient in anything.

Think about it! We don't require individuals or families or towns to be completely self-sufficient as they had to be in centuries' past: we don't each have to go and tend our few strips of land and hope for good crops this year, then spend our evenings darning our old clothes and that's a really good thing.

Buy British? Buy foreign, I say!

surreyman_2

What about the banks now owned by the British Government? Surely, they must be British!

gtx

bit late joining this discussion.

i work for barclays - a 'british bank' with CEO John Varley also being british but after him the top guys and girls are all american - one recently brought in from citibank.

even as staff i find this ironic given the state of americas economy

lizsalisbury27

I opened a Giro Bank account in 1981 to keep jobs locally (HQ Bootle Liverpool) in the last tory recession, this was then taken over by Alliance and Leicester in 2003. Now we belong to Santander ( officially from last Thursday) and things have started to go haywire.
A cash transfer from one Santander account to another now takes 5/6 days as does a Standing Order. We have queried where the money is held, as it immediately leaves one account, until it appears eventually into the recipients account after almost a week and are anxiously awaiting a written reply. Over the phone it is a 'change of procedure' that we were not informed of and we recieved an mere apology.
Other Santander users beware of overdrawls and ensuing charges.

MissWhitepaws

I would just like to say I moved from Abbey/Sandtander to the Co-operative Bank - very, very pleased with the service both face to face, over the phone and on the net.

Longjonsilver

I run a small business with business accounts that were set up with RBS. I chose this bank as it was British or as British as possible. I have no desire to be associated with Santander or any other foreign owned bank in any way shape or form. I am therefore looking for a British bank , that will remain British, to which to transfer my accounts. Overall I am very angry that this whole situation has arisen since Santander who are based in a rotten economy anyway seem to be creating as big a monopoly as RBS which is strange given that the reason for the sale was that RBS had too big a monopoly according to the EU.
Is it just me that believes that our successive weak governments are allowing the country to be dragged down with Europe without good reason