Bradford & Bingley plc is a British bank with headquarters in the West Yorkshire town of Bingley. In 2008, partly due to the credit crunch, the bank was nationalised and in effect split into two parts; the mortgage book remained with the now publicly owned Bradford & Bingley plc, and the deposits and branch network was sold to Abbey National, itself owned by the Spanish bank Grupo Santander. Since 11 January 2010 the branch network has been rebranded Santander and the Bradford & Bingley name now solely relates to the nationalised section of the bank. The bank was formed in... December 2000 by demutualisation of the Bradford & Bingley Building Society following a vote of the building society's members, who swapped their nominal share of the building society for at least 250 shares of the newly formed bank. Bradford & Bingley Building Society was formed in 1964 as a result of the merger of the Bradford Equitable Building Society and the Bingley Permanent Building Society, both of which were established in 1851. In May 1997, the Society bought Mortgage Express from Lloyds TSB for £64m.
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