UK's Santander, following the completion of its rebranding of Abbey and Bradford & Bingley branches has recorded a jump of 30% in its pre-tax profits to £1.54bn in 2009. It has been said that after a rise in its gross lending share of the mortgage market from 13.9% in 2008 to 18.6% in 2009, takeover opportunities in the UK will be looked for by Santander as £7.6bn in 2009 was recorded in net lending business.

Anthony Frost, Head of Corporate communications at Santander UK said, "Its strong financial backing had allowed it to offer competitive mortgage products. Our competitive deals allowed us to write significant new business and increase our lending as part of a deliberate attempt to grow our market share while others withdrew."

52% was the average percentage for LTV of the work books for existing stock and 64% for new business. The Santander Group on the whole posted a profit of €8.9bn

Fahim Antoniades, Group Director at Mortgage Centre IFA added, "I would not be surprised if Santander did try to acquire branches as it wants to compete with Lloyds on market share. I just hope these results will persuade other lenders to finally step up and increase their 2010 lending, as I suspect that many were much better capitalized than they admitted during 2009".