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In ye olden times, before the crunching of the credit, this would have been disaster day for Britain's banking sector, possibly even setting alight the European Parliament election campaign with a real European issue.

This could have been portrayed by the Euro-sceptic press as a cause to defend the English Channel against Johnny Foreigner's incursions, whereas the fascination is more with who pays to clean Douglas Hogg's moat.

In a double whammy, a Spanish brand is to replace familiar names from the high street.

Abbey no more. Alliance no more. Bradford, Bingley and Leicester are to be wiped off the financial map, and now Santander is to succeed where King Philip and his Armada failed.

It bodes ill for Manchester United's chances against Barcelona in the Champions League final.

On top of that comes news from Brussels, where the European Commission today set out its plans to centralise and co-ordinate much of the banking regulation across Europe.

The British Government is not over-pleased about some of the elements in it.

They could see continental supervision curtailing some of the more innovative sectors of the British financial sector, as power moves to the European Central Bank.

While one of the proposed new bodies would be a watchdog against the build-up of systemic risk, three others - for insurance, banking and securities - would have powers to enforce common technical accounting standards across all 27 countries.

Whitehall doesn't like the sound of that enforcement power.

Such are the financial times and the loss of confidence that cross-border regulation and the imposition of a Spanish brand are almost being welcomed.

The cross-border nature of banking, without matching cross-border supervision, has clearly been a factor allowing the banking crisis to spin close to catastrophe.

So everyone is on board for changing that.

And the fact that Santander has the clout and the appetite to do business in British banking is a sign that we could eventually get back to a normally functioning international financial system.

One of the problems the British economy has faced in recent months is that foreign banks - notably from Iceland, Ireland and the USA - have retreated to their home markets and to repair their balance sheets.

It's also a reminder of how this crisis looks to some smaller countries. Britain, and Scotland, have been used to exporting financial services, and to their banking giants being big global players.

This crisis has threatened some countries with the collapse of their domestic banking industry, leaving them dependent on decisions made in foreign headquarters.

While Britain has had its own huge challenges, and paid for them at huge risk to the taxpayer, there has never been much doubt that British-based banks would emerge from the wreckage.

But go to the Netherlands or Belgium, and the disaster that befell ABN Amro and Fortis affects their sense of economic autonomy.

Perhaps that explains why they have had much more raucous, shoe-throwing shareholder meetings than the politely grumpy gatherings in Britain.

On the same theme, we've got confirmation today from Nationwide, having taken over the Dunfermline Building Society, that it's not going to post any cessation accounts, leaving a veil over what went so badly wrong. All you can see from the Nationwide annual figures is that the Dunfermline had net liabilities of £1.4 billion that the largest part of that exposure was a £2.3 billion accounting entry described only as "shares".