MADRID (Reuters) -Santander UK’s board chair William Vereker has announced his intention to step down this year, once an orderly handover process has been completed, the British unit of the Spanish lender said in a statement on Tuesday.
Earlier this month, a person familiar with the matter said that Santander was reviewing its British presence as part of a regular assessment of its major markets.
Last week, Santander Chair Ana Botin said that Britain is and will remain a core market for the Spanish lender, and on Tuesday she wrote in the statement that Vereker had overseen an essential transformation of the business that “will make the UK a core part of the group’s success in the years to come”.
The move however comes at a time when Santander UK is booking subpar profitability compared to the bank’s overall returns amid market concerns about the higher costs of business borne by banks in Britain compared to other countries.
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, editing by Andrei Khalip)
