Santander renews its business leadership in Europe. The bank has announced the appointment of Pedro Castro e Almeida, until now CEO of Santander Portugal, as head of its new European business. In this way, from September 1, Castro e Almeida will replace Antonio Simões, one of the bank’s strongmen, who is on the favorite list to become CEO of Santander. The Portuguese banker is leaving the entity to join British insurance company Legal & General.

Castro e Almeida, who joined the bank in 1993, will be in charge of business in Spain, the UK, Poland and Portugal and lead the transformation in the region. He will report directly to the group’s CEO, Héctor Grisi. He will also remain as CEO of Santander Portugal.

The position of head of Europe is the main position, only below the president, Ana Botín, and Grisi himself on the bank’s organizational chart. In 2019 the entity decided to reorganize its business around three markets: Europe, North America and South America. The bank’s intention is to provide a more agile structure to avoid duplication and for each area to capitalize on the group’s strengths. The ultimate goal is for each country to incorporate in each country what has worked in other countries in order to function as a well-oiled group and not as an isolated area.

At that time, Santander was designing two-headed structures for North America with Héctor Grisi and Scott Powell leading the business. The bank also appointed Gerry Byrne as head of Europe and put Sérgio Rial in charge of business in South America. Four years later, Santander took over everything, some twice.

Area renovation

In Europe, this is actually the third relay in just four years. The first occurred in 2020. At that time, Gerry Byrne decided to retire after 50 years in banking. At that time, the position was taken over by Antonio Simões. Under the direction of a Portuguese banker, the bank has made progress in integrating its activities in the region and in the construction of One Santander. Likewise, ordinary profits in Europe have increased from 1.138 million euros in 2020 to 3.810 million in 2022. From this position, Simões has become one of the strong bankers in the group and his name is even shuffled in the delegation of the group’s pool of directors. A position that was eventually promoted by Héctor Grisi.

In the case of North America, Santander has also laid off its area manager twice since 2019. That same year, Scott Powell left the bank for Wells Fargo to join as head of operations. It was a controversial exit, as Powell gave up his bonus in exchange for Santander dropping the clause that had not allowed him to work for the competition. It is also a sensitive victim. Powell has been mandated by the entity to fix the entity’s problems with US regulations. Between 2014 and 2016, the bank failed the Federal Reserve’s stress test: its financial planning and risk management systems were not up to the task.

With Powell’s departure, the bank reduced its structure and the North American region began to be headed by just one executive, Héctor Grisi. Under his baton, US and Mexican businesses skyrocketed. Grisi himself is credited with playing a key role in this transformation, with a 40% increase in subscribers and digitization of banking operations. After being named CEO of the group, Santander signed Christiana Riley (formerly at Deutsche Bank) as head of North America.

For its part, Santander also recently replaced regional manager for South America. In January 2022, Sergio Rial left his position and was taken over by Carlos Rey de Vicente from Spain, who remains in charge of the bank’s main geographical area.

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