This book is based on ethnographic research from 2001-2, during Bank of Scotland’s first year of merger with Halifax to form HBOS. The research is revisited from the present perspective in the
wake of the global banking and financial crisis that undermined HBOS in 2008. This historical perspective on the ethnographic data is used to explore: people’s responses to the pressures of
heightened competition and organisational change; mutual and sometimes antagonistic perceptions of Scottish and English identities across the two merged banks; conflicting evaluations of
national and organisational cultures; and the challenges of integrating ethnographic and historical perspectives in a single study. As an historical ethnography it ’salvages’ a disappearing
culture of Scottish and UK banking, disintegrated by neoliberal processes.
