In July 2008 the group announced it intended to purchase the UK bank Alliance & Leicester, which held £24bn in deposits and had 254 branches. Santander also purchased the savings business of Bradford & Bingley in September 2008, which held deposits of £22bn, 2.6m customers, 197 branches and 140 agencies. The acquisition of Alliance & Leicester completed in October 2008 when the B&B's shares were delisted from the London Stock Exchange. By the end of 2010 the two banks merged with Abbey National under the Santander UK brand. In October 2008, the Group announced to acquire 75.65% of Sovereign Bancorp it did not own for approximately US$1.9 billion (€1.4 billion). Because of the 2008 financial crisis at the time, Sovereign's price-per-share had fallen greatly: Rather than the $40 per share it would have cost in 2006, Banco Santander ended up paying less than $3 per share. The acquisition of Sovereign gave Santander its first retail bank in the mainland United States. Santander renamed the bank to enhance its global brand recognition in October 2013. On 14 December 2008, it was revealed that the collapse of Bernard Madoff's Ponzi scheme might mean the loss of €2.33 billion at Banco Santander.