by business editor Trevor Sturgess

Dozens of bank branches across the county have a new name from today.

The Abbey National and the Bradford & Bingley savings business are now known as Santander after their Spanish parent company.

Formula One champion driver Lewis Hamilton is launching the new branding.

Alliance and Leicester is also part of the Santander Group and will be renamed later in the year. Santander has invested £30million in a facelift for the branches.

Between them, Abbey and Bradford & Bingley have more than 1,000 branches in the UK. Alliance will add another 300 or so branches under the Santander name.

Santander, which bought Abbey for £9billion in 2004, says it means "a better service for all our customers as well as innovative, great value products".

It marks the end of the Abbey National as a brand after more than a century.

It was founded in the 1870s in Abbey Road, London, which the Beatles later made famous. Bradford & Bingley can trace its roots back to the
1850s and was bought by Santander in 2008 at the height of the banking crisis when its mortgage business was nationalised.

The Spanish bank was founded more than 150 years ago, and now has 13,700 branches and 90 million customers worldwide.