Egg Banking - History

History

Egg was established as a division of UK life assurance company Prudential. Prudential Banking was involved in direct selling of savings and mortgage products. In 1998 the division was renamed Egg and relaunched as the UK's first Internet bank. The service gained in popularity, and soon the bank had more than 2 million customers. In 2000 Prudential cashed in on its stake and floated 21% of the company on the London Stock Exchange, retaining 79%. In 2003 Prudential announced its intention to sell its remaining stake in Egg to a third party. Despite rumours of interest from the likes of Royal Bank of Scotland and HSBC, no formal offers were made public, and Prudential dropped its plans in 2004.

Subsequently Prudential bought back the remaining minority share in January 2006 and de-listed the organisation from the London Stock Exchange. Chief Executive Officer Paul Gratton left the organisation in March 2006 to be replaced by then Chief Operating Officer Mark Nancarrow. Mark was subsequently replaced by Ian Kerr, formerly of HBOS, in November 2006.

On 29 January 2007 Prudential announced that it had agreed to sell Egg to Citigroup for a consideration of £575 million subject to approval by the Financial Services Authority.

On 1 May 2007 the sale of Egg to Citi was completed and Egg CEO Ian Kerr was appointed head of Egg and Citi UK Consumer.

In early 2008 Ian Kerr left the business and was replaced in March by Bert Pijls. Bert joined Citi in 1990 and has held a number of roles within the bank.

In November 2007 approximately 350 non-specialist roles were moved from the Dudley centre to Derby resulting in redundancies and relocation packages. The Dudley office has now been closed.

On 1 March 2011 Barclays Bank announced that they had agreed to buy Egg's more than 1 million UK credit card accounts from Citigroup. Barclay's Barclaycard division took over the Egg credit card business in May 2011 after Citi had spent time trying to sell the business as part of its Citi holdings portfolio. Citi and Barclaycard share the same site at Pride Park but it was announced on 21 June 2011 that Barclaycard would not require to continue operations in Derby and will move operations to their Kirkby and Northampton sites, leaving 659 people redundant.

On 25 July 2011 Egg announced the proposed sale of all savings and mortgage accounts to Yorkshire Building Society. This would complete Citigroup's sale of the Egg business.