About our shareholders

Santander Consumer Finance provides a range of highly competitive products designed for purchase of personal, business and leisure vehicles. Our finance and related solutions are distributed through major motor manufacturers and a network of dealers via more than 4000 points of sale across the UK. We are the UK’s leading independent finance company and currently have over half a million live customer agreements.

Santander Consumer Finance is a wholly owned subsidiary of Santander UK plc, a leading financial services provider in the UK offering a wide range of personal and commercial financial products and services. We are authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority in respect of agreements regulated by the Consumer Credit Act 1974 and for general insurance mediation activity. In addition, we are a member of the Finance & Leasing Association and we meet all of the standards set out in their Lending Code.

Hyundai Capital Services (Hyundai Capital) is a South Korean consumer finance company providing a range of auto financing, auto leasing, personal loan and home mortgage products.

Established in 1993, Hyundai Capital is the largest provider of auto financing in Korea, and is also a major player in the auto lease market. Hyundai Capital subsequently changed its trade name to Hyundai Financial Services Co. in April 1995.

In January 1996, Hyundai Capital was licensed as an instalment financing company by the Ministry of Strategy and Finance of Korea.

Shortly thereafter, Hyundai Capital commenced its housing and automotive instalment financing businesses and began providing automotive financing to purchasers of new and used Hyundai Motors vehicles.

Hyundai Capital’s principal business areas are as follows:

• Automotive Finance: Automobile financing offering loans and leasing to new and used car buyers.
• Credit Loan & Housing Loan: Credit and housing loans guaranteeing discounts and high-credit lines.
• Commercial Finance : Commercial finance providing customized funding to help corporate investment and growth.

In 1967, in an innovative arrangement, Chung Ju-Yung started the Hyundai Motor Company to build the Cortina in Korea, in association with Ford. Smart enough to realise world-class expertise could unlock lucrative new markets, Chung hired former Austin Morris boss George Turnbull in the 1970s to lead development of the very first Hyundai car.

Within two decades Hyundai was exporting in volume, to the huge US market among others. Today, Hyundai has the world's biggest car plant. Ulsan, in South Korea, builds 1.5 million cars a year - the equivalent of one every 20 seconds, thanks to 34,000 personnel and berths where three 50,000 ton ships can anchor simultaneously. It's also known as the 'forest plant', because it has 58,000 trees landscaped within it.

Kia Motors Corporation was founded in May 1944 and is Korea’s oldest manufacturer of motor vehicles. From humble origins making bicycles and motorcycles, Kia has grown – as part of the dynamic, global Hyundai-Kia Automotive Group – to become the world’s fifth largest vehicle manufacturer.

Today, Kia produces more than 1.4 million vehicles a year at 14 manufacturing and assembly operations in eight countries. These vehicles are sold and serviced through a network of more than 3,000 distributors and dealers covering 172 countries. The Corporation has more than 40,000 employees and annual revenues of more than US$17 billion.

In its ‘home’ country of South Korea, Kia operates three major vehicle assembly plants – the Hwasung, Sohari and Kwangju facilities – plus a world-class research and development centre employing 8,000 technicians at Namyang and a dedicated environmental R&D centre. The Eco-Technology Research Institute, near Seoul, is working on hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles for the future as well as state-of-the-art end-of-life vehicle recycling technologies and processes. Kia spends 6% of its annual revenues on R&D and also runs research centres in the USA, Japan and Germany.

Recently, Kia has completed construction of its first-ever European engine and vehicle assembly plant (in Slovakia) and its second manufacturing facility in China. The building of Kia’s first plant in the USA is progressing on schedule for an opening in late 2009. All three of these new plants have a capacity to build up to 300,000 vehicles annually on flexible assembly lines that can manufacture several different models simultaneously to adapt to global changes in buying trends.