{"id":17746,"date":"2025-07-04T22:05:13","date_gmt":"2025-07-04T22:05:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/?p=17746"},"modified":"2025-07-04T22:05:13","modified_gmt":"2025-07-04T22:05:13","slug":"santander-doubles-down-on-uk-presence-amid-spains-banking-ma-turmoil","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/?p=17746","title":{"rendered":"Santander doubles down on UK presence amid Spain&#8217;s banking M&#038;A turmoil"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"RegularArticle-ArticleBody-5\" data-module=\"ArticleBody\" data-test=\"articleBody-2\" data-analytics=\"RegularArticle-articleBody-5-2\"><span class=\"HighlightShare-hidden\" style=\"top:0;left:0\"><\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"InlineImage-imageEmbed\" id=\"ArticleBody-InlineImage-106820496\" data-test=\"InlineImage\">\n<div class=\"InlineImage-wrapper\">\n<div>\n<p>A sign hangs from a branch of Banco Santander in London, U.K., on Wednesday, Feb. 3, 2010.<\/p>\n<p>Simon Dawson | Bloomberg via Getty Images<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"group\">\n<p>In one move, <span class=\"QuoteInBody-quoteNameContainer\" data-test=\"QuoteInBody\" id=\"RegularArticle-QuoteInBody-1\">Santander<span class=\"QuoteInBody-inlineButton\"><span class=\"AddToWatchlistButton-watchlistContainer\" id=\"-WatchlistDropdown\" data-analytics-id=\"-WatchlistDropdown\"><button class=\"AddToWatchlistButton-watchlistButton\" aria-label=\"Add To Watchlist\" data-testid=\"dropdown-btn\"><span class=\"AddToWatchlistButton-addWatchListFromTag\"><\/span><\/button><\/span><\/span><\/span> has silenced months of speculation over it&#8217;s allegiance to the British high street \u2013 and complicated a year-long consolidation saga in Spain&#8217;s banking sector.<\/p>\n<p>On Tuesday, Spain&#8217;s largest lender <a href=\"https:\/\/www.santander.co.uk\/about-santander\/media-centre\/press-releases\/santander-to-acquire-tsb-from-sabadell-for-ps265\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">said<\/a> it agreed to buy British high street lender TSB for \u00a32.65 billion ($3.6 billion) from Catalonia&#8217;s <span class=\"QuoteInBody-quoteNameContainer\" data-test=\"QuoteInBody\" id=\"RegularArticle-QuoteInBody-3\">Sabadell<span class=\"QuoteInBody-inlineButton\"><span class=\"AddToWatchlistButton-watchlistContainer\" id=\"-WatchlistDropdown\" data-analytics-id=\"-WatchlistDropdown\"><button class=\"AddToWatchlistButton-watchlistButton\" aria-label=\"Add To Watchlist\" data-testid=\"dropdown-btn\"><span class=\"AddToWatchlistButton-addWatchListFromTag\"><\/span><\/button><\/span><\/span><\/span> in an all-cash deal subject to approval. The transaction will generate a return on invested capital of more than 20%, bringing its return on tangible equity in the U.K. from 11% last year to 16% by 2028, Santander said.<\/p>\n<p>Acquisitions have been at the heart of Santander&#8217;s British expansion after it entered the market in 2004 through the purchase of Abbey National. But the profitability of the U.K. branch has faltered \u2014 with pre-tax profit <a href=\"https:\/\/www.santander.co.uk\/assets\/s3fs-public\/documents\/Santander%20UK%202024%20Factsheet.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">down by an annual 38% last year<\/a> \u2014 sparking questions over Santander&#8217;s long-term presence in Britain. A March announcement of potential layoffs and 95 branch closures did little to abate the rumors despite CEO Ana Botin&#8217;s frequent denials.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We never thought of leaving the U.K. The U.K. is very important for us,&#8221; Santander Chief Financial Officer Jose Garcia Cantera told CNBC&#8217;s &#8220;Squawk Box&#8221; on Wednesday. &#8220;It&#8217;s actually the largest balance sheet of all the countries [where] we operate. It&#8217;s a high quality, low-risk business, predictable returns, in hard currency, in sterling, and this helps to stabilize our risk-return profile.&#8221;\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>He added that the U.K. has &#8220;always been a very important and core component of Santander&#8217;s diversification strategy.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The TSB acquisition, meanwhile, &#8220;not only makes sense strategically, as I said, the U.K. helps with our risk-return profile, but it&#8217;s also financially very, very compelling.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The deal could work as a defensive play from Sabadell, which only took over TSB from Lloyds in 2015 and seeks to stop a takeover bid from Spanish peer <span class=\"QuoteInBody-quoteNameContainer\" data-test=\"QuoteInBody\" id=\"RegularArticle-QuoteInBody-6\">BBVA<span class=\"QuoteInBody-inlineButton\"><span class=\"AddToWatchlistButton-watchlistContainer\" id=\"-WatchlistDropdown\" data-analytics-id=\"-WatchlistDropdown\"><button class=\"AddToWatchlistButton-watchlistButton\" aria-label=\"Add To Watchlist\" data-testid=\"dropdown-btn\"><span class=\"AddToWatchlistButton-addWatchListFromTag\"><\/span><\/button><\/span><\/span><\/span>. The two banks have been locked at odds since Sabadell rejected BBVA&#8217;s initial all-share merger offer in May last year, on grounds of it undervaluing the acquisition target.<\/p>\n<p>Now entrenched in a potential 14-billion-euro hostile takeover, BBVA has <a href=\"https:\/\/shareholdersandinvestors.bbva.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/20250630_-IP_ENG.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">decided to keep its bid alive<\/a> despite a recent condition from the Spanish government that the takeover may only proceed if the two banks do not integrate their operations for at least three years.<\/p>\n<p>Over this period, &#8220;both entities maintain [must] separate judicial identity and assets, as well as autonomy in the management of their activities,&#8221; Spanish Economist Minister Carlos Cuerpo said during a press briefing, according to a CNBC translation.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<h2 class=\"ArticleBody-subtitle\"><a id=\"headline0\"><\/a>Spanish banking competition &#8216;toughest in Europe&#8217;<\/h2>\n<div class=\"group\">\n<p>Madrid \u2014 whose government under Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez depends on parties in Sabadell&#8217;s home base of Catalonia \u2014 has long opposed the deal amid concerns over job losses, received a late-May caution from the European Commission against hindering the merger unduly.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It is important that banking sector consolidation can take place without undue or inappropriate obstacles being imposed,&#8221; said Olof Gill, the European Commission&#8217;s spokesperson for financial services,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.reuters.com\/sustainability\/boards-policy-regulation\/eu-warns-spains-government-not-hinder-bbvas-bid-sabadell-2025-05-28\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">according to Reuters<\/a>. Spain&#8217;s antitrust watchdog has already cleared the acquisition.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div role=\"region\" aria-labelledby=\"Placeholder-ArticleBody-Video-108117526\">\n<div role=\"button\" tabindex=\"0\" id=\"Placeholder-ArticleBody-Video-108117526\" class=\"PlaceHolder-wrapper\" data-vilynx-id=\"7000369980\" data-test=\"VideoPlaceHolder\">\n<div class=\"InlineVideo-videoEmbed\" id=\"InlineVideo-0\" data-test=\"InlineVideo\">\n<div class=\"InlineVideo-wrapper\">\n<div class=\"InlineVideo-inlineThumbnailContainer\"><span class=\"InlineVideo-videoButton\"><\/span><span><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"group\">\n<p>It remains to be seen whether the TSB sale will dull BBVA Chairman Carlos Torres Vila&#8217;s appetite to press ahead with submitting a merger offer to Sabadell shareholders once permissions come through.<\/p>\n<p>RBC analysts on Wednesday assessed that Santander&#8217;s acquisition of TSB &#8220;seems to be a last major effort to convince [Sabadell]&#8217;s shareholders to not accept BBVA&#8217;s offer during the upcoming take-up period&#8221; and would &#8220;likely further complicate&#8221; BBVA&#8217;s takeover.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We are completely neutral on the Sabadell-BBVA transaction,&#8221; Santander&#8217;s Garcia Cantera told CNBC. &#8220;This is an asset that becomes available in one of the countries where we operate, and it&#8217;s our fiduciary duty to look at all these opportunities and try to do our best for our shareholders.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Yet he recognized that competition in Spanish banking at present is &#8220;probably the toughest in Europe,&#8221; citing the weak price of domestic mortgages.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t think this is going to make banking in Spain more comfortable. Probably the opposite,&#8221; Garcia Cantera said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/2025\/07\/02\/santander-doubles-down-on-uk-presence-amid-spains-banking-ma-turmoil.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A sign hangs from a branch of Banco Santander in London, U.K., on Wednesday, Feb. 3, 2010. Simon Dawson | Bloomberg via Getty Images In one move, Santander has silenced months of speculation over it&#8217;s allegiance to the British high street \u2013 and complicated a year-long consolidation saga in Spain&#8217;s banking sector. On Tuesday, Spain&#8217;s<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":17747,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rank_math_lock_modified_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[196],"tags":[248,2254,7182,1147,7183,4593],"class_list":{"0":"post-17746","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-finance-news","8":"tag-banking","9":"tag-doubles","10":"tag-presence","11":"tag-santander","12":"tag-spains","13":"tag-turmoil"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17746","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17746"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17746\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/17747"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17746"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17746"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17746"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}