Meet Europe’s most powerful woman banker
MADRID — Ana Patricia Botin, named chairman of Banco Santander, becomes the most powerful woman in European banking, succeeding her father a day after his death.
Santander’s board Wednesday named Botin, 53, to the top executive post at Europe’s secondbiggest bank by market value in a unanimous vote. Botin, who is giving up her post as chief executive of Santander’s British business, replaces her father Emilio who died of a heart attack at the age of 79.
Ana Botin, the eldest of Botin’s six children with 26 years of service at Santander, takes over at the bank with ¤1.2 trillion ($1.6 trillion) of assets that administers lenders in markets from Britain to Brazil, the United States and Poland as well as Spain. The mother of three joins the highest echelons of global finance and extends the dynasty of the Botin family, which owns 2 percent of the bank and has helped run the lender since at least 1895.
“Family ownership has been a blessing,” said Peter Braendle, who manages ¤500 million in European equities, including Santander, at Swisscanto Asset Management in Zurich. “Ana has had a preparation that didn’t start five years ago. It began a long time ago and it was clearly very carefully planned.”
After joining Santander in 1988, Ana Botin led acquisitions in Latin America in the 1990s and ran the Banesto Spanish retail unit before becoming chief executive of Santander’s British unit in 2010. The British business has been driving the bank’s return to earnings growth as Santander’s home market emerges from an economic slump.
“She’s done very well,” Sanford
“Sandy” Weill, the former head of Citigroup, said by phone. “She went to a place where they didn’t have any past background in and she’s built a very, very good presence where it represents a decent part of the company’s earnings.”
The leadership change comes less than 18 months after Javier Marin, 48, took over as chief executive. The appointment was a surprise at the time because he hadn’t led any of the lender’s core retail banking activities.
Santander shares have gained 42 percent since Marin was named chief executive, compared with an 19 percent gain in the benchmark STOXX Europe 600 Banks Index over the same period.
The shares Wednesday fell 0.7 percent to ¤7.70 in Madrid, valuing the bank at about ¤92.3 billion.
By her own account, Ana Botin has given little thought to her lineage since joining the bank’s board 26 years ago.
She grew up in a “normal” household in the Spanish port city of Santander where she made her own bed and her father would sometimes eat sardines from a can for his breakfast, Santander’s inhouse magazine reported in 2005. She never considered “whether I’m a Botin or not” while working at the bank, the magazine quoted her as saying.
She also said she wanted women to have the same opportunities as men. At Banesto, which she was running at the time, she tried to avoid having the bank hold meetings after 7pm to prevent disruption to families.
She was educated at Santander’s Slaves of the Sacred Heart school and also in Switzerland and Britain and excelled at golf, becoming Spain’s junior champion in 1973 and 1974. She speaks five languages and graduated in economics from Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania.