Banco Santander and the Acquisition of Abn Amro and Abbey National

Santander Bank, formerly known as Sovereign Bank, is a wholly owned subsidiary of Banco Santander, a Spanish bank. The bank mainly operates within the North Eastern region of the United States, with its headquarters based in Boston, Massachusetts. Santander bank offers various financial services and products, among them retail banking, mortgages, corporate banking, capital markets, insurance, cash management, trust and wealth management as well as insurance. The bank holds over $77 billion in assets, and has 650 branches. It also has over 2000 ATMs and employs 9800 employees.

Supply of labour needs to be taken into consideration by human resources on a local, national and international scale. Different types of labour have become obsolete, some more scarce and others have become more saturated because of its demand for example service industries have become more demanded whilst mining has become a more scarce trait. This means training has become more of an issue because its important employees has the correct skills especially in an organisation that is not as common locally because employee will not have the appropriate skills. Regionally some industries more popular depending on the area therefore training may not be as demanded. Some industries have products/services that are trends whether its long term/ short term meaning training required either way but may not apply to the industry for long if the trend ceases.

On April 18, 2007, however, RBS contacted ABN AMRO to propose a deal in which the consortium RFS would bid for ABN AMRO and subsequently split the components of the firm.

Training is a key resource in any business , as it plays a important role for the business in making more money. The business should ensure that employees are all adequately trained for the specific tasks, and investigate other reasons for the poor quality of the output. Marks and Spencer do offer training programmes to all their staff to make sure they are working

Individualism is the tendency of people to look after themselves and their immediate family only. This dimension is in direct contrast with collectivism, the tendency of people to belong to groups that look after each other in exchange for loyalty. Hofstede has found that economically advanced countries tend to place greater emphasis on individualism than do poorer countries. For example, the United States, Great Britain, the Netherlands, and Canada have high individualism. In contrast Ecuador, Guatemala, Pakistan, and Indonesia have low individualism. Although Hofstede did not measure changes in individualism along with a time continuum, he did find that Japan has a higher individualism score than any other country in the Orient. Given the

After gaining enough capital to do so, Santander pursued a Merger and Acquisition strategy to largely increase its retail banking scope and scale internationally. It could also be argued that, with the help of their M&A strategy, the company was able to gain competitive advantage by differentiating their IT services. As we will discuss later, Santander acquired a special banking system that would allow the companies to reduce human resources, increase efficiency ratios, and smoothly merge with other businesses due to the integration of the technology.

Santander Group was founded in 1857 in the city of Santander, Catabria, Spain. With time, Santander grew rapidly in Spain and eventually branched out into Latin American and London. Santander became even bigger by acquiring Banco Espanol de Credito in 1994 and merging with Banco Central Hispano in 1999. Nowadays, Santander Group is one of the largest banks in the world in terms of market capitalization and net profit. Also, it operated one of the largest networks of retail bank in the western world. Santander Consumer Finance has grown from a small group of units operating in Spain, Germany, and Italy, into one of the largest consumer finance companies. The United States remains the largest market in the world for consumer finance, but has been growing in Europe for the past 20 years.

Barings Bank Founded in 1762, Barings Bank (previously known as Baring Brothers & Co.) was the oldest merchant banking company in England. Barings collapsed on February 26, 1995 as the result of the activities of one of its traders, Nick Leeson, who lost $1.4 billion by investing in the Singapore International Monetary Exchange (SIMEX) with primarily derivative securities. This was actually the second time the bank had been faced with bankruptcy. 5 Following the

The economic crisis which erupted from the financial systems within developed countries affected all economies across the world. There was a significant amount of job losses, company bankruptcies and cuts in incomes and budgets (McKibben, Stockel 2009). Companies were focusing on sales growth which took urgency over most workplace including learning and development and many trying to decide what was important in terms of return on investment (Dullien et al 2010). Training and development was an easy target and one of the first aspects to be cut; some may argue that this is not the most effective resolution. There is evidence that suggests training and development is a tool which contributes positively to an organisations performance within the economic downturn (Brum 2010).

The Consortium generally strengthens the individual bank’s assets to meet their objectives. All member banks have equal or proportionate ownership shares – the member with the highest percentage of shares has the leading authority. After the bank 's objective is met the consortium typically dissolves.

So, training employees to be able to provide training to the customers is a must. Once again, this comes back to having the best employees. The best employees will be able to train clients better, and provide better customer service in general. This will lead to more sales, and a

Mergers and acquisition have a both positive and negative impacts on a firm 's financial performance or on its profitability. Firm may be in manufacturing sector or it may b service sector, but whenever the transaction of merger and acquisition takes place it effects the performance. In Africa Bank 's financial performance effects after the mergers takes place and the firm 's financial performance comprises or checked by Liquidity ratios, Performance ratios(ROA &ROE), and Investment valuation(EPS). The

Barings Bank was founded in 1763 and known as the oldest merchant bank in London until its collapse in 1995. The bank not only accepted deposits and provided financial services to its clients but also traded on its own account. Over the years it became quite successful and in 1980 it set up brokerage operations in Japan. Soon after, it expanded its operations to include a handful of other Asian countries and in 1992 it activated its seat on the SIMEX (Singapore International Monetary Exchange) with Nick Leeson as general manager. However, Leeson used his position to engage in both fraudulent behavior and risky speculation on futures and options, and ended up losing £1.4 billion of the funds capital, which finally caused the bank’s insolvency in 1995. Barings bank was purchased by, the Dutch bank, ING for the nominal price of £1.

One of the best ways to transform an organisation is through corporate training. Corporate training, particularly for managers, is the ideal way to develop and implement strategies and incorporate structure and standardisation. Managers who are well trained are better at making decisions, more productive, and notably astute at enhancing their employees’ professional growth and development. Continuous training helps managers feel more equipped to do their jobs and more confident in their ability to carry out the company’s mission and values.

The consortium leverages individual banks' assets to achieve its objectives. All member banks have equal ownership shares – no one member has a controlling interest. After the bank's objective is met the consortium typically dissolves.