Williams and Glyn

Williams and Glyn's Bank Ltd

The historic Williams & Glyn's Bank Limited was established in London in 1970, when the Royal Bank of Scotland merged its two subsidiaries in England and Wales, Williams Deacon's Bank Ltd. and Glyn, Mills & Co. In 1985, the historic Williams & Glyn's Bank was fully absorbed into the Royal Bank of Scotland.

Project Rainbow

In 2000, the Royal Bank of Scotland Group acquired National Westminster Bank in a hostile takeover. In 2009 it was announced that all 311 Royal Bank branches in England and Wales together with the seven Scottish branches of NatWest were to be divested by the troubled group, under the dormant Williams & Glyn's brand, to comply with European Union state aid requirements. The process was expected to take up to four years to complete.

Agreement with Santander Group

In March 2010, it was reported that the group had issued a sales memorandum for the business, which would include 318 branches and around £20 billion in loans provided to small businesses and households. Following the deadline for initial bids on 7 April, Santander Group, Virgin Money, National Australia Bank, BBVA and the private equity firm JC Flowers were all confirmed to have submitted bids for consideration. It was announced on 3 August that the Spanish Santander Group would pay around £1.65 billion for the branches, expected to be rebranded as part of Santander UK, in a deal set to be completed by December 2013. Santander withdrew from the sale on 12 October 2012.

Agreement with Corsair consortium

In September 2013, the group confirmed it had reached an agreement to sell 314 branches to the Corsair consortium, made up of private equity firms and a number of institutional investors. The branches, incorporating 250,000 small business customers, 1,200 medium business customers and 1.8 million personal banking customers, are due to separated from the group in 2016 as a standalone business under the Williams & Glyn's name. By May 2015, the total number of branches included in the new business had been reduced to 307.

Preparation for launch

In October 2015, the RBS Group submitted an application for a banking licence for the new bank. The group also published its transition plan for the launch of Williams & Glyn. According to the plan, a website for the new bank will be launched and branch signage will be changed to the Williams & Glyn identity which will initially operate as a trading name used by Royal Bank of Scotland plc in England and in Wales and National Westminster Bank plc in Scotland. In the lead up to the formal launch of the new bank, expected in early 2017, customers will be able to access Williams & Glyn branded internet, mobile and telephone banking services, and will receive new branch sorting codes and new debit cards. To facilitate the transition, separate internet and telephone banking systems have been created for RBS customers in England and Wales. Planning applications for the erection of new branch signage bearing the Williams & Glyn brand identity were submitted to local authorities across the north of England in early 2016. Designs for the uniforms to be worn by Williams & Glyn staff were revealed at an event held at SS Great Britain in Bristol. A standalone ATM network for the new Williams and Glyn bank was created in June 2016.

On 16 December 2015, RBS confirmed it had received a number of informal offers for the bank, and would seek to complete a sale by the end of 2017. HM Treasury subsequently announced it had asked the Competition and Markets Authority to suspend a review into how competitive the bank would be in the UK banking sector.

Cancellation

On 5 August 2016, RBS published details of the group's half-yearly financial results, revealing a £2.05 billion loss for the first half of 2016. RBS Group blamed historically low interest rates and the fallout from the UK's United Kingdom European Union membership referendum, 2016 with uncertainties caused by the pro-Brexit result. These result indicated, according to RBS, that Williams & Glyn would not prosper as an independent bank. Instead, Reuters reported that Santander UK was interested in buying the unit outright, although Santander had abandoned talks in September 2016. CYBG plc, owner of Clydesdale Bank and Yorkshire Bank confirmed in October 2016 that it had made what it described as a "preliminary non-binding proposal" for the unit. In the same month RBS confirmed that it would be unable to sell Williams & Glyn by the end of 2017, potentially giving the European Commission the right to take control of the sales process. By December 2016, both Santander and CYBG had scaled back their bids, citing issues with integrating the six NatWest branches in Scotland, and with integrating large corporate customers. RBS instead started exploring selling other assets or closing branches that it could not sell thus requiring customers based at those branches to find alternative banking arrangements.

Proposed retention of Williams & Glyn assets

In February 2017, HM Treasury and the European Commission reached a provisional agreement in which RBS would be able to retain the Williams & Glyn assets in return for investing £750 million into a fund aimed at increasing SME lending by challenger banks and for RBS agreeing to allow SME customers of challenger banks to use its branch network for cash and cheque handling. If approved, the Williams & Glyn assets would be re-integrated into the core business during 2017 and 2018.

Branding

Initially planned to be called Williams & Glyn's Bank, it was announced in December 2013 that the bank name would be shortened to Williams & Glyn owing to the difficulty of using an apostrophe in branding and website addresses. The original Williams and Glyn's Bank was formed by merging Williams Deacon's Bank with Glyn, Mills & Co.

A logo for Williams and Glyn was revealed by RBS Group in April 2014. The logo features the words "Williams" and "Glyn" joined by a large ampersand. The historic Williams and Glyn's Bank did not have a distinct logo, instead it used the "Daisy Wheel" logo of its parent company, The Royal Bank of Scotland.

Leadership

The leadership team of the part of the Royal Bank of Scotland plc that was to have become Williams & Glyn was composed of: