By Jeannette Neumann And Christopher Bjork
MADRID-- Banco Santander SA replaced its chief executive with
itsfinance chief and made several changes to its board of directors
Tuesday in the first major leadership shake-up since Ana Botín took
over the eurozone's largest lender following her father's
death.
Javier Marín, whose differences with Ms. Botín were known
outside the bank, will leave Santander after less than two years as
CEO and be replaced by José Antonio Álvarez, Santander said in a
statement. It gave no reasons for Mr. Marín's departure but simply
conveyed Ms. Botín's gratitude for his "great work for Banco
Santander for 23 years and especially for his service as CEO."
Ms. Botín, who was appointed executive chairman in September,
also elevated one of her top lieutenants, José García Cantera, to
the post of chief financial officer. Mr. García Cantera was CEO of
Banesto, once a unit of Santander, when Ms. Botín chaired that
bank. Spanish bankers said he is a particularly close ally of Ms.
Botín.
Tuesday's changes demonstrated the 54-year-old Ms. Botín's
eagerness to establish herself as a powerful chairman, transforming
a board that her father, Emilio Botín, had built up over decades
and pushing out a chief executive he had appointed in April 2013.
Her appointments followed criticism by analysts and investors that
the board was too heavily stacked with her father's aging allies
and contemporaries.
While bankers, analysts and investors said they had expected Ms.
Botín to make her own mark on Santander, the shake-up came more
quickly than many had anticipated. At the time of her takeover, Ms.
Botín's message was one of continuity and she publicly backed Mr.
Marín in his role as chief executive.
But at times before Mr. Botín's death, Mr. Marín and Ms. Botín
clashed over strategic matters, according to a person familiar with
their relationship. Spanish bankers said Tuesday that tensions
between the two executives were discussed in Madrid and Barcelona
financial circles and had sharpened once Ms. Botín took the helm at
Santander.
Earlier this month, Ms. Botín gave a public glimpse of her
willingness to excise her father's allies from Santander.
On Nov. 14, Santander dissolved its international advisory
board, a 17-year-old creation of Mr. Botín that had met twice last
year and was stacked with powerful figures from financial and
political circles. The decision separated the bank from one of the
advisory board's members, Rodrigo Rato, a former managing director
of the International Monetary Fund who is the target of several
judicial inquiries in Spain.
Days earlier, Mr. Marín had deflected a barrage of reporters'
questions about why Mr. Rato remained on the board despite the
investigations.
One set of inquiries, opened two years ago, center on his
leadership of Bankia SA, the failed lender that received EUR22.4
billion ($27.9 billion) in European Union bailout funds in
2012.
In recent weeks, a judge began an investigation into whether Mr.
Rato and several dozen other executives at Bankia and Caja Madrid,
the largest of seven savings bank that merged to form Bankia, had
misused company-issued credit cards for personal purchases,
apparently without telling the tax authorities.
Mr. Rato has denied any wrongdoing in all the inquiries and says
he has returned the sum he spent on his company credit card.
Santander said the advisory board was disbanded because the bank
"has decided to reshape its institutionalized advisory
relationships in light of the changes that have occurred globally
and will continue in the next decade."
Other recent changes hint at Ms. Botín's attempts to establish
herself.
While she was often called Ana Botín in the U.K., she was widely
known in Spain as Ana Patricia Botín. As recently as the summer, a
Santander Web page listing its board members referred to her as Ana
Patricia Botín.
The Web page now referred to her as Ana Botín.
Ms. Botín's staff says she prefers to be called "executive
chairman, " in contrast to her father, who was referred to as
simply chairman or "el presidente," in Spanish. Ms. Botín's staff
says the term "executive" is necessary because in some countries
the title of chairman can be nonexecutive. In Spain, chairman
typically implies an executive role, meaning Ms. Botín's current
role is akin to the chairman-chief executive role in the U.S. The
CEO at Santander serves more as a chief operating officer.
Ms. Botín's staff has said she didn't want to change the title
from executive chairman to executive chairwoman, to maintain some
continuity of titles between her father's role and her own.
Tuesday's announcement by Santander listed four other
appointments. Bruce Carnegie-Brown will be first deputy chairman
and lead independent director of the board. Mr. Carnegie-Brown is
chairman of Moneysupermarket.com, a U.K. price-comparison website,
and a board member at Santander's U.K. unit, which Ms. Botín led
before her father's death.
Others named as independent directors were Catalan businesswoman
Sol Daurella, who chairs the Coca-Cola bottling company in Spain
and Portugal, and Carlos Fernández González, a Mexican national who
is a former top executive of beer maker Grupo Modelo, as
independent directors. Mr. Fernández is a current member of the
board of Santander Mexico.
Rodrigo Echenique, a nonexecutive member of the board, was named
as deputy chairman.
The new board members will replace two men who are more than 70
years old and are resigning as directors-- Fernando de Asúa, a
board member since 1999, and Abel Matutes, a member since
2002--Santander said.
"We do not think the process of 'generational change' is over,
and we expect further changes in the coming months," Francisco
Riquel, an analyst at N+1, a Madrid-based financial services firm,
wrote in a report. But he added, "We do not expect these changes to
bring along meaningful changes to the bank's strategy."
Mr. Álvarez, the new chief executive, has served as finance
chief for 10 years and like Ms. Botín, is 54. In a memo to the
bank's staff, Ms. Botín said "no one knows our business, our
balance sheets, our team and our investors better."
"Mr. Álvarez is an experienced and well-regarded executive whose
leadership should be positive for Santander and the shares,"
Citigroup analyst Stefan Nedialkov said Tuesday in a research
report. "We expect continuity, predictability and potentially more
transparency on issues such as capital and strategic
priorities."
Santander shares closed up 1% in Madrid.
The changes will take effect on Jan. 1, Santander said, a month
before the bank presents annual earnings results. Mr. Marin, who
had served as Mr. Botín's chief of staff before his elevation to
CEO, joined his boss for a joint presentation of last year's annual
results.
David Enrich in London contributed to this article.
Write to Christopher Bjork at christopher.bjork@wsj.com
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