NEARLY 500 Abbey staff are wondering if they will be saying "buenos dias" to new Spanish bosses after the banking giant agreed terms on an £8.3 billion offer from abroad.

Banco Santander Central Hispano, Spain's largest bank, will give shareholders one share in the new, enlarged group for each Abbey share they own, as well as 31p a share in cash.

The deal would create the tenth biggest banking operation in the world.

Worryingly for the 470 Segensworth call centre staff, BSCH also expects the combination to provide cost savings and revenues benefits worth £370m within three years of the deal being completed, although it doesn't say how.

"It's disappointing," said Linda Rolph, general secretary of the union representing Abbey staff. "It would be difficult to see how they could save so much by simply cutting staff, the current management did a pretty good job of that. Cost cutting and job losses go hand in hand but I think they have pruned the tree back as far as it can go before it withers and dies."

The development follows recent scares where Hampshire staff were spared the axe in the company's cost cutting drive.

Abbey has about 1.7 million small shareholders who received windfall shares when it converted from a building society in 1989.

But it is thought to be unlikely that shareholders will want to hold shares in a Spanish bank that does not have a UK listing.

BSCH has agreed to provide those with 2,000 or fewer Abbey shares with a dealing facility enabling them to sell shares in the Spanish company in the UK.

Alex Scott, senior research analyst at Seven Investment Management, said: "I don't know if retail investors will be interested in holding paper in a foreign bank."

He said both small shareholders and institutional ones could decide to sell their shares, particularly institutional investors who tracked the FTSE 100 index in which Abbey would no longer feature.

BSCH hopes to complete the acquisition by the end of the year but must first win the approval of shareholders and hope no other bidders emerge.

Abbey, which is the UK's second biggest provider of mortgages and savings, has attracted interest from National Australia Bank and Bank of Ireland in the past, while Lloyds TSB was blocked by competition authorities from completing an £18 billion takeover in 2001.