Santander has said £65 million worth of savings can be made on IT initiatives as part of its proposed merger with Alliance & Leicester (A&L), it is reported.

The Spanish bank recently made an offer worth £1.26 billion to acquire A&L and hopes to make a number of efficiency savings including those in IT, states the ComputerWorldUK website.

It adds if A&L shareholders approve the deal, Santander will move A&L's operations to its own Microsoft-centred platform Partenon.

Nearly all of Santander's IT services and technical infrastructure have been placed on to the Partenon platform over the past two years, the website says.

Santander's chairman Emilio Botin referred to the recommendation of the offer for A&L as "a significant step in the development of Santander's UK business", ComputerWorldUK reports.

Meanwhile, A&L last week announced the appointment of Alan Gillespie as chairman.

He is set to take up the role from September 8th after he steps down as chairman of Ulster Bank Group.

According to a recent survey by Connect, the two biggest IT headaches for businesses were 'everyday hassles with IT' (37 per cent) and 'security concerns' (32 per cent) In a recent survey of SMEs for Connect, the two most important benefits of outsourcing were 'guaranteed response times' and 'allowing in-house IT staff to concentrate on more strategic issues'