Like Father, Like Daughter at Banco Santander

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Ana Patricia Botín has held several top positions at Banco Santander, Spain’s largest bank by assets.Credit Suzanne Plunkett/Reuters
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MADRID — Banco Santander decided on Wednesday to keep its leadership in the family by appointing Ana Patricia Botín as executive chairwoman to succeed her father, Emilio Botín, who died the night before.

Ms. Botín, 53, takes the helm at about the same age that Mr. Botín was when he took charge from his father in 1986. Ms. Botín, who has held several top positions at the bank, was approved unanimously by the board of Santander, Spain’s largest bank by assets.

Mr. Botín’s death was unexpected, and he had recently shown no inclination to retire soon despite being one of Spain’s longest-serving corporate chiefs.

Santander was transformed over three decades into a behemoth of international finance by Mr. Botín, whose aggressive acquisition strategy extended the bank’s footprint from Brazil to Britain and the United States. When Mr. Botín succeeded his father, the family-controlled bank was the seventh largest in Spain.

Jesús Sánchez Quiñones, the director general of Renta 4, a Madrid brokerage firm, said Ms. Botín faced a “big challenge to maintain the kind of position the bank has gained under her father, not only in terms of size but also as one of the few big banks not to need any rescue funding during the crisis.”

He added that he expected Ms. Botín to have a “less presidential style” of leadership than her father. He noted that she could rely on a strong management team, including the chief executive, Javier Marín, who was appointed last year.

Ms. Botín has a strong track record of her own. She studied in the United States and then started her investment banking career at JPMorgan Chase in New York. She returned to Spain to join Santander in 1988, rising rapidly through the ranks and establishing herself as her father’s heir apparent.

But her ascent did not come without some turbulence. In 1999, Santander was acquiring another bank, Banco Central Hispano, when El Pais, Spain’s most influential newspaper, pronounced Ms. Botín “the most powerful woman in Spain.” The day after the El Pais article, she resigned abruptly as executive vice president. Some analysts at the time speculated that the newspaper profile fueled jealousy at Central Hispano and could have created problems for her father.

Three years later, however, Ms. Botín was back and took charge of one of Santander’s main retail businesses, Banesto, an appointment that made her only the second woman to run a bank in Spain. She appeared regularly on the list of the world’s most influential female executives.

In 2010, Ms. Botín left Banesto and moved to London to run Santander’s British operations, succeeding António Horta-Osório, who became chief executive of the Lloyds Banking Group.

She “certainly has plenty of international experience,” Mr. Sánchez Quiñones said.

Ms. Botín, who is married with three children, has avoided the public spotlight. According to Spanish media, she is an avid golfer — and one of her sisters was married to the golf champion Severiano Ballesteros. She also shares her mother’s passion for classical music.

Analysts said Ms. Botín would need to quickly show investors that they should maintain their faith in a family that still controls the bank even though it owns only about 2 percent of its equity. Santander shares were virtually unchanged in Madrid on Wednesday.

Mr. Botín managed to mix ruthless and rapid decision-making with “a real power of seduction” when it came to convincing his board, shareholders and politicians to back him, said Robert Tornabell Carrio, a banking professor at the Esade business school in Barcelona.

Mr. Botín was a close adviser to a succession of Spanish governments, also acting during the recent crisis years as a de facto ambassador for corporate Spain even as his own bank reduced significantly its reliance on earnings from its home market.

Ms. Botín takes the helm “incredibly well prepared, but she will still have to win support from American funds and others — and that won’t be easy,” Professor Tornabell Carrio said. Succeeding her father is “a difficult act to follow, however good you are.”

Ms. Botín is now in charge of a bank that is also probably more focused on developing its existing businesses rather than growing through takeovers, as it has shown recently in Spain. Santander has allowed other institutions to buy the country’s top struggling savings banks, noted Manuel Romera, finance professor at the IE Business School in Madrid. Banco Santander, he added, “can’t just cruise along, but it’s certainly become too big to fail.”