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A shareholder asked at the lender's extraordinary general meeting to consider a take over bid by Abbey's owner Banco Santander why the board had not asked its stakeholders to consider interest shown in the bank earlier in the year.

Roy Brown, acting chairman of Alliance & Leicester, said this was because no other offer had been tabled.

He said: "There has been a lot of commentary in the media about alleged offers from a variety of different banks. What I can tell you is the offer we received in July from Banco Santander was the only offer we ever received to acquire Alliance & Leicester.

"We did indeed have some talks with Santander in December last year but they did not result in an offer being made to acquire Alliance & Leicester."

Mr Brown was unable to confirm what the future held for the lender's brand identity once a takeover had been completed.

He said: "We obviously had a fairly intense negotiation period with Banco Santander and their advisers trying to get the best offer we could for the bank.

"To then go on and have detailed discussions we thought was inappropriate until we had this meeting because we are still a separate bank. I am sure after today's meeting those discussions will become more intensive."