Santander Chairman Emilio Botín Dies Aged 79
Mr. Botín Built Up Spanish Bank From Local Lender to Global Powerhouse
The Wall Street
Journal
Emilio Botín,
chairman of Banco Santander S.A. and widely regarded as one of the most powerful people in Spain over the
past three decades, has died of a heart attack at the age of 79.
Mr. Botín, who
built up Santander from a small regional lender into one of the largest banks
in the eurozone, died overnight, the Spanish bank said Wednesday. Santander's
board plans to meet later in the day to pick a new chairman.
In recent years,
observers have said Mr. Botín had privately expressed a preference for his
daughter Ana-Patricia to succeed him at the helm.
The Botín family
is the largest shareholder of the bank, if all its stock is combined, but the
bank's capital is highly fragmented, and it is unclear whether Ms. Botín would
have enough board support to succeed her father.
In a note to
investors, Nick Anderson, an analyst at Berenberg Bank, called Mr. Botín
"a legendary character…[and] a phenomenal deal maker" whose passing
marked "the end of an era."
Mr. Botín was
born in 1934 in Santander, a small city on the northern coast of Spain that was
traditionally the busiest trading port for Castille, the interior region around
which the early modern Spanish empire was created.
The Botíns have
controlled Banco Santander since the early 20th century, when Emilio Botín's
grandfather became chairman. Emilio Botín became a board member in 1960, and
succeeded his father as chairman in 1986.
An avid golfer
and able negotiator, Mr. Botín took advantage of government plans to force
mergers in Spain's banking sector, with the aim of creating larger lenders that
would better able to compete in the European market.
The implosion of
larger rival Banesto SA, which was taken over by the government in late 1993,
offered a key opening for Mr. Botín, who secured the purchase of the troubled
lender at an auction the next year.
From that point,
Mr. Botín increased the scale of Santander through an aggressive series of
acquisitions, gaining a reputation for deal-making that soon went beyond
Spanish borders.
The purchase of
the U.K.'s Abbey National in 2004, a then-rare move by a Spanish company into
the British market, was a key step along the way. Several acquisitions in Latin
America have also contributed to Santander's rapid growth.