Deal Gives Banco Santander a Foothold in Britain. Banca y Finanzas:: Finances & Big Blue

Deal Gives Banco Santander a Foothold in Britain


Fecha Martes, julio 27 @ 04:16:34
Tema Banca y Finanzas:: Finances & Big Blue


By HEATHER TIMMONS
Published: July 27, 2004

Adrian Dennis/Agence France-Presse - Getty Images
Emilio Botín, left, chairman of Banco Santander, and Abbey National's chief executive, Luqman Arnold

Emilio Botín, left, chairman of Banco Santander, and Abbey National's chief executive, Luqman Arnold.

LONDON, July 26 - Banco Santander Central Hispano of Spain said Monday that it would buy the British mortgage bank Abbey National for £8.5 billion ($15.6 billion), the largest cross-border banking deal ever attempted in Europe.

If the deal goes through, Abbey National, with its 741 branches and 17.8 million customers, would bring Santander a stable foothold in Britain, one of Europe's strongest consumer lending markets. Santander, a retail giant, expects the deal, which will be mostly in stock, to result in 560 million euros ($678 million) in pretax earnings a year by 2007.

Emilio Botín, chairman of Banco Santander, said Abbey would "reinforce our pan-European franchise," as well as provide "the group with a more balanced stream of earnings." Santander has been looking to diversify its assets because of a large presence in Latin America, where it has over 4,300 branches.

The deal catapults Mr. Botín, 69, who has been aggressively expanding Santander for decades, into the spotlight. Acquisitions in Latin America and Spain gave Santander bulk. With the Abbey deal, Mr. Botín is embracing a notion that many of his peers in Europe have shunned: a successful strategy in one European country can be transferred, just as successfully, to another.


Abbey National has a "huge potential for improvement in its retail business," Mr. Botín told reporters during a news conference at the London headquarters of Goldman Sachs on Monday. To exploit that potential, he plans to apply a Santander-like management - build a strong sales culture seeking to sell several products to every customer - while improving Abbey's efficiency, he said.


But even before Mr. Botín starts to execute the deal, his cross-border plans could be shattered: many analysts expect his bid to nudge some British banks to try once again to buy Abbey, which has long been seen as a takeover target. The deal is subject to shareholder approval.


"We think the British majors will go after Abbey," said Vasco Moreno, director of European Research at Keefe Bruyette & Wood in London. British banks would "just be silly if they didn't have a go," he said.


In 2001, Britain's competition commission told Lloyds TSB that it could not acquire Abbey, because consumers would be left without enough choice, effectively stifling any other offers from Britain. But competition has increased significantly since then, Mr. Moreno said, as smaller banks have increased their market share, and the regulators may have changed their minds.


Rival bidders from outside Britain are seen as less likely. Citigroup, which held talks with Abbey earlier this year, is no longer interested, two people close to those talks said. Citigroup had no comment.


Santander's price is fair, analysts said, but a British offer might be welcomed by pension funds and asset managers that would have to sell the stock of the Spanish bank because it does not trade in London.


Santander said it was offering one share of its stock plus a one-time dividend of 31 pence a share for every share of Abbey National. That makes the total offer worth 584 pence a share, based on Santander's closing price on July 22, the day before Abbey said it had received an unidentified takeover offer. Santander's stock sank on July 22, and at Monday's closing price the deal was worth only £8 billion.


Santander said it would take a 2.1 billion euro charge for the deal, to fund Abbey's pension liabilities and to mark down some of its assets.


Santander's strong sales culture has been a success in Spain: the group's subsidiaries there sell an average of four products to each customer, about twice the British average. Analysts questioned whether Mr. Botín could bring that success across the Channel because consumer behavior and loan markets are very different in the two countries.


"The cross-sell is the holy grail for any bank," said Lloyd Whitworth, Britain fund manager with Morley Fund Management in London, which has £240 billion in assets, including Abbey shares. "The banks are all trying to do that in Britain, and to date it is proving difficult," he added.


That is because about two-thirds of all home loans in Britain are made through independent advisers.


Victoria Cannon, a fund manager with Royal London Asset Management, which has £22.84 billion in assets, including Abbey National shares, said that Mr. Botín's cross-selling strategy is "very laudable, but their biggest challenge is going to be getting consumers through the doors of their branches."


His cost-cutting plans may be easier. Santander plans to cut Abbey National's five data processing centers to one, move most of its back-office operations to Spain, and outsource some of its call centers. Executives said they did not know how many jobs would be lost in Britain.


Abbey's chief executive, Luqman Arnold, who was chosen in 2002 to turn the bank around, said Monday that he would leave in mid-2005.


THE NEW YORK TIMES
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