Alliance & Leicester plc was a British bank and former building society, formed by the merger in 1985 of the Alliance Building Society and the Leicester Building Society. The business demutualised in the middle of 1997, when it was floated on the London Stock Exchange. It was listed in the FTSE 250 Index, and had been listed in the FTSE 100 Index from April 1997 until June 2008.
After running into difficulty during the 2008 financial crisis, the bank was acquired by the Santander Group in October 2008, and transferred its business into Santander UK plc in May 2010.
It was fully integrated and rebranded as Santander by the end of 2011.[1][2] The bank's international subsidiary based in Douglas, Isle of Man, Alliance & Leicester International, continued to use the name Alliance & Leicester, until it was fully merged into Santander UK in May 2013.