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Contents 1 Independent British banks 2 Other British banking brands owned by British companies 3 British banking brands owned by foreign banks 4 Foreign banks in the United Kingdom 5 External links

The table shows the main independent British banks. The list is quite short as British banking has been highly consolidated since the early 20th century. Unlike some other major economies, the UK does not have a major strata of independent local banks.

Bank	Headquarters	Assets (£m)	Assets ($m)
HSBC	London	662,710	1,267,777
Royal Bank of Scotland	Edinburgh	583,467	1,124,108
Barclays Bank	London	522,089	1,005,857
HBOS	Edinburgh	442,881	853,255
Lloyds TSB	London	279,843	539,146
Standard Chartered	London	73,543	141,688
Alliance & Leicester	Leicester	49,967	96,266
Northern Rock	Newcastle upon Tyne	42,790	82,439
Co-operative Bank	Manchester	39,000	71,327
Bradford & Bingley	Bingley	35,458	68,313

Note: Assets listed as as of December 31, 2004, and are listed in millions of pounds sterling and U.S. dollars.

There are however a small number of independent specialist or local banks. There are all just a small fraction of the size of the smallest of the banks in the table above: Airdrie Savings Bank, C. Hoare & Co, Close Brothers Group, Julian Hodge Bank, N M Rothschild & Sons. There is also a government-run savings bank called National Savings and Investments.

The other main class of consumer financial service organisation in the United Kingdom is the building society, but the building society sector is much smaller than it used to be as most major building societies demutualised in the 1980s and 1990s. Halifax (now part of HBOS) and Abbey National (now foreign owned) were the two largest building societies. Of the banks listed in the table above, Alliance & Leicester, Northern Rock and Bradford & Bingley are former building societies. Several other building societies were taken over after they demutualised. See the building society article for a list of the largest remaining building societies. Only the Nationwide is large enough to appear in the table above if it were a bank.

• Bank of Scotland: merged with Halifax to form HBOS, but still trades under the Bank of Scotland name.
• Birmingham Midshires: owned by HBOS.
• Cahoot: owned by Abbey National.
• Coutts & Co: owned by the Royal Bank of Scotland.
• Egg Banking plc is owned by the British insurance company Prudential plc, purchase by Citigroup for £575mm announced 29 January 2007.
• Halifax: merged with the Bank of Scotland to form HBOS but still trades under the Halifax name.
• Harrods Bank: owned by Harrods.
• Intelligent Finance: telephone and internet banking brand owned by HBOS.
• NatWest: owned by Royal Bank of Scotland
• Sainsbury's Bank: 55% owned by British supermarket company Sainsbury's and 45% owned by HBOS.
• Tesco Personal Finance: a 50:50 joint venture between British supermarket company Tesco and the Royal Bank of Scotland.
• Ulster Bank: owned by Royal Bank of Scotland
• The Woolwich: owned by Barclays

• Abbey: owned by Grupo Santander of Spain. It was Britain's sixth largest bank by assets when it was taken over in 2004.
• Bank of Ireland: based in the Republic of Ireland. One of the leading banks in Northern Ireland, and present in Great Britain to a lesser extent.
• Clydesdale Bank: owned by National Australia Bank.
• First Trust Bank: owned by AIB Group of the Republic of Ireland.
• Northern Bank: owned by Danske Bank of Denmark.
• Yorkshire Bank: owned by National Australia Bank.

Overseas consumer banking brands which are available in the UK include ING Direct, Bank of Cyprus, Turkish Bank and some Citibank products.

Virtually all of the world's leading banks have investment and commercial banking offices in the City of London.

• BBA - British Bankers' Association - BBA Member Banks
• Unlawful Bank charges cost UK 4.7 Billion a Year
• Complete List of Banks in United Kingdom