Banco Santander SA once described its anecdote with the Royal Bank of Scotland Group it’s mainly a far - attainment planned initiative on the international platform.

For its Scottish complement now 83%- holding by the U. K. government that partnership attempt stimulated to a less- pompous termination on Wednesday when RBS vended off 318 of its U. K. branches to its former partner.

That deal is an apt prompt of how these two international players have seen their affluence deviate by the international financial crisis. One, Santander, has appeared on top, while the other, RBS, has turn out to be a poster-child for the hubris and extremes of the banks in the run-up to the disaster.

It all begin in the year 1988 with months of secret discussion, code-named Tornado by Spaniards and Hurricane by the Scots, that concluded in a calculated partnership by which the two banks decided to grasp cross shareholdings and be symbolize on each other's panel.

As per Santander wrote in a book to grade its 150-anniversary RBS and Santander were of parallel size, there were many equivalent in their histories and their trade cultures had features in general. Both surfaced on the edge of their relevant countries, broke out of the limitations of their district and mount to become national players.

For many years, the destiny of these two expansions -hungry banks were closely aligned. Both were huge consolidators in their confined markets, mounting into national champions via bold attainment.