Building a Global Bank: The Transformation of Banco Santander

by Mauro F. Guillén, Adrian Tschoegl

In 2004, Spain's Banco Santander purchased Britain's Abbey National Bank in a deal valued at fifteen billion dollars--an acquisition that made Santander one of the ten largest financial institutions in the world. Here, Mauro Guillén and Adrian Tschoegl tackle the question of how this once-sleepy, family-run provincial bank in a developing economy transformed itself into a financial-services group with more than sixty-six million customers on three continents.

Founded 150 years ago in the Spanish port city of the same name, Santander is the only large bank in the world where three successive generations of one family have led top management and the board of directors. But Santander is fully modern. Drawing on rich data and in-depth interviews with family members and managers, Guillén and Tschoegl reveal how strategic decisions by the family and complex political, social, technological, and economic forces drove Santander's unprecedented rise to global prominence. The authors place the bank in this competitive milieu, comparing it with its rivals in Europe and America, and showing how Santander, faced with growing competition in Spain and Europe, sought growth opportunities in Latin America and elsewhere. They also address the complexities of managerial succession and family leadership, and weigh the implications of Santander's stellar rise for the consolidation of European banking.


Building a Global Bank tells the fascinating story behind this powerful corporation's remarkable transformation--and of the family behind it.

280 pages, Hardcover

First published January 6, 2007

About the author

Mauro F. Guillén is director of the Lauder Institute and the Dr. Felix Zandman Professor of International Management and Sociology at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of The Limits of Convergence: Globalization and Organizational Change in Argentina, South Korea, and Spain (Princeton), The Rise of Spanish Multinationals, and the coauthor of Building a Global Bank (Princeton).

Reviews

[M Thomas · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a bit of a data dump combined with a narrative on the evolution of Santander, interspersed with tangents on the structure of banking globally.

The purpose of the book was not clear. It seems that the author intended for us to learn lessons that could be apply elsewhere, but the Botin II's wheeling and dealing was so frenetic that only someone supremely talented could have pulled it off - it is not an example to be followed. Similarly, there could have been much more attention devoted to how Santander achieved best decile expense/revenue ratios for decades, but that's only mentioned in passing. I'm not sure how much the reader gains from a recitation of all of Santander's buying and selling as well as executives leaving with large payoffs.

[bookreader]

A workmanlike, but informative, survey of Santander's meteoric rise to global banking leadership from humble origins as a regional Spanish bank. Naturally, publication coincided with a peak in the share price (which has since halved), leading one to wonder why any value-conscious executive would ever consent to participate in such a project....