DAVOS, Switzerland (Reuters) – Britain is and will remain a core market for Santander, its executive chair Ana Botin said at the World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos on Tuesday.
“We love the UK, it is a core market and will remain a core market for Santander. Punto (fullstop), that’s it,” Botin said when asked if the bank would sell its British business.
A person familiar with the matter said on Sunday that the euro zone’s second-biggest bank by market value was reviewing its British presence as part of a regular assessment of its major markets.
The Financial Times reported on Saturday that Santander was exploring a number of strategic options, one of which was exiting the British market to focus on bigger growth regions such as the U.S., adding that no deal or announcement was imminent and that the review was at an early stage.
Santander first entered the British market in 2004 when it bought Abbey National. It also acquired then Bradford & Bingley and Alliance & Leicester.
(Reporting by Jesús Aguado; additional reporting by Emma Pinedo; editing by Andrei Khalip and Alexander Smith)
