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Last week, following an extraordinary general meeting in Birmingham, Alliance & Leicester's shareholders voted to accept Santander's bid to take over the lender.

While only about 100 shareholders attended the meeting, just less than 85 per cent of stakeholders in the lender voted in favour of the proposed take over through postal and online votes.

A 75 per cent majority was required to allow the takeover to commence.

Roy Brown, acting chairman of Alliance & Leicester, said while the bank was solvent, the bleak forecast for the future economic environment could place the lender in a precarious position.

He said the financial markets could face further shocks, more severe than those that hit Lehman Brothers, which filed a petition for bankruptcy the day before the EGM.

Mr Brown said: "We have avoided many of the problems experienced by other institutions so internally the bank is fine, Our big worry is external factors. It is the worst financial crisis in 100 years and it is really very, very serious.

"We have discussed this obviously at length with our advisers Rothschild, Morgan Stanley, with a number of economists and we have had many board discussions.

"Our view is the financial market extreme turbulence will continue and may increase even compared with what happened at the weekend."

Mr Brown said the board had urged its shareholders to approve the takeover as it would mean the lender was a lot better placed to weather the ongoing financial storm.

Reiterating Santander's strength as the seventh largest bank in the world, Mr Brown said he was "really worried" a bank of Alliance & Leicester's size would be too small to weather that storm if conditions got worse.

He said: "There is a high risk of external events eroding shareholder value to a greater extent than we have already seen. There is greater certainty and I underline that word certainty because that is what we are talking about today, by being part of a larger organisation.

"The whole theme of today's meeting is stability and certainty in an age of turbulence. It is because of the certainty and because of the turbulence that we think this offer will give shareholders stability and certainty and in today's environment, particularly after last weekend. I think that is vital."

Steve Danson, chartered financial planner for Preston-based IFA Elementum, said he expected further mergers in the banking sector.

He said: "I am certain we will see more consolidation and not just among the smaller banks."