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(ShareCast News) - Santander UK had made a formal offer to buy the Williams & Glyn (W&G) branches from Royal Bank of Scotland ending the bank's seven year struggle to separate from it, multiple reports claimed.The Spanish-owned lender and fifth-largest bank in Britain, was understood to have offered to acquire the soon to be branded W&G network which consists of 315 branches, £24bn of deposits and nearly 2m customers.RBS, which is 73% government owned, is on a deadline to offload W&G by the end of 2017 as part of the terms of a £45.5bn bailout issued between the Treasury and the European Commission during the 2008 financial crisis.The bank warned in April that "there is a significant risk that the separation and divestment to which we are committed will not be achieved by 31st December 2017".A deal was almost struck with Santander UK around two years later after beginning talks with potential buyers, however it fell through due to IT challenges in 2012.In terms of the current offer, Santander UK was said to be interested in an asset transfer deal including the branches, customers and assets and intends on leaving behind the IT platform RBS has spent more than £1.2bn developing.Chief executive of RBS Ross McEwan describes the W&G separation as the most complicated banking IT project in the world.Banks familiar with the process said it would involve a transitional IT agreement whereby Santander adapts W&G top its own systems.If RBS go ahead with the asset transfer deal it would only recoup a fraction of the proceeds from selling the standalone bank. It could however cap the cost of establishing a new banking platform which the bank estimates will exceed £1.7bn.Sources close to the companies cautioned that a deal may remain uncertain and could fall apart.RBS is expected to release its plans for W&G and its half year results on Friday.W&G would rank as the UK's seventh largest bank with a personal current account market share of approximately 2%. That along with the business' 113,000 commercial customers its market share in the small to medium enterprises (SME) segment is 5%.Other banks including Virgin Money and Banco Sabadell which owns TSB hoped to explore offers for W&G but it is unclear whether they have had discussions with RBS yet.RBS has also made plans to float what would be Britain's seventh largest bank on the London Stock Exchange after striking a deal in 2013 to attract investment from a consortium. However, analysts feel this is unlikely due to the new lender's technology platform being incomplete.A Santander spokesperson said: "Whilst our focus is organic growth, we will continue to analyse opportunities in our core 10 markets where they add value and benefit to our customers and shareholders. That said, we do not comment on rumours or market speculation.""RBS declined to comment.Share price of RBS fell 1.75% to 185.80p at the close.