The number of independent banks shrank further during 2008: Northern Rock was nationalised by the UK Government (and is now owned by Virgin Money), followed by Bradford & Bingley; Alliance & Leicester was acquired by Santander, who merged it into Santander UK.
As well as this, the Nationwide Building Society (commonly referred to as "Nationwide"), and Standard Chartered both make compelling arguments to be the fifth and sixth members of the elite group with both banks even surpassing one or two of the "Big 4" Banks in some areas of performance.
][citation needed] In addition to this the Bank of England is also an extremely high performer in global banking but its private and state-run status keeps it out of the "Big 4" as the group is solely reserved for private companies,[citation needed] all of which are listed on the London Stock Exchange as of 2024.
There are 42 building societies in the UK as of 2021 which provide retail banking services to the general public.
The five largest as of October 2020 are: A full list of businesses considered banks by the Prudential Regulation Authority is shown in the table below.