In recent years, Santander has grabbed headlines with an audacious expansion of its US investment banking business, especially by recruiting star bankers from the wreckage of Credit Suisse.
But the splashy hires tell only part of the story. More important to Santander, the strategy is built on profitable growth.
Far from playing up to the image of a buccaneering bank challenging the status quo, José Linares, head of Santander’s corporate and investment bank, sums up the CIB’s performance as “steady Eddie”.
“A key reason behind our consistent growth in the last seven years is maintaining a balanced mix between markets, banking and transaction banking,” he said. “It allows us to remain useful to clients throughout the cycle, and by keeping [these businesses] relatively pari passu in terms of their balance of importance and investment, we can deliver predictable, high returning growth.”
This was borne out in the first quarter, when global markets, run by Mike Bagguley, turned in 45% of revenues, boosted by market volatility. Transaction banking produced a third and global banking a quarter.
Santander has brought its investment banking business into synch with the rest of the CIB with a full-throated expansion that began in August 2023.
Santander seized a chance to turbo-charge its US ‘banking build-out’ strategy — known internally as BBO — by hooking 150 bankers from Credit Suisse as it foundered and was swallowed by UBS.
Many of that cohort now lead parts of Santander’s investment bank. Steve Geller is global head of mergers and acquisitions; Jeff Cohen runs leveraged finance and private credit globally, with capital markets for those products run by Jonathan Moneypenny; while David Hermer is head of CIB in the US.
Group CEO Hector Grisi worked at Credit Suisse for 17 years and recommended recruiting some of the top bankers from his former employer.
“It’s important to build the US at scale and speed, and it was the right thing to do,” said the head of investment banking at a rival. “In the past, European banks have tried to build piecemeal, and it hasn’t worked.”
Santander doesn’t break out the performance of its US CIB, but a spokesperson said its profits doubled in 2024.
The US is the centrepiece of Santander’s expansion plan in global banking, but it does not exist in isolation. It is part of a broader strategy to create a global investment bank.
Santander has built up M&A, established global industry teams and enlarged leveraged finance, culminating in the creation last December of a global banking division.
It was entrusted to Darren Jones, topping off a number of promotions for the former Barclays lifer who joined in 2017. “Darren has brought a dynamism to the place and he’s highly respected,” says one insider.
Global banking comprises debt capital markets — including investment grade and leveraged and acquisition finance — and corporate finance, consisting of equity capital markets and M&A.
Under the radar
“In Europe, over the last few years, we’ve done a tremendous work to strengthen the team,” said Jones. “We’ve built product capability, but a lot of that has been in ones and twos and small teams, so it’s been under the radar.”
In the last 12 months, Santander has hired around 50 senior bankers in Europe and it has plans for further expansion.
“Some of that is upgrading, some of that is repositioning talent,” said Jones. “Going forward, we’ll be moving from a very country-centric model to progressively having more industry bankers that are geographically agnostic.”
He believes the Credit Suisse arrivals have produced a halo effect. “The teams we have are pretty lean but very focussed,” he said. “But we hired really high calibre individuals and I think that underpins the key recipe to success. Because of the presence of Santander in Europe and because of what we’ve done in the US, it’s really enabled us to assemble an A-team.”
Jones’s A-listers include the likes of Brian O’Keefe, head of European M&A, who arrived from Goldman Sachs in 2023; Myles Evanson, global head of growth financing; Sean Taor, the former RBC Capital Markets banker who arrived last year as head of EMEA DCM; and Laurence Boone, head of CIB as well as banking and corporate finance, for France.
As it tries to scale up its investment bank, Santander’s watchword is profitable growth, rather than chasing league table glory. Nevertheless, the bank is proud of its progress in the rankings.
In the first quarter of 2025, Dealogic ranked it 16th in US M&A, up from 115th a year ago. “The success we’re enjoying now really comes from the early days of platforming the business in the right way,” said Jones. “We moved from a very federal structure to a globally integrated model, building the product and building the capability and hiring the talent. So we’re really reaping the rewards of putting all of those capabilities in place.”
Going next door
Santander has built up global banking by looking for “adjacencies” where it can expand existing areas of expertise, rather than taking a “me too” approach and mimicking full service rivals.
For example, Santander’s ECM business focuses on strategic equity solutions and private capital, drawing on its experience of providing early stage funding to renewables and infrastructure companies.
This is complemented in the US by expertise in special purpose acquisition companies, thanks to the recruitment of a team from Credit Suisse led by Niron Stabinsky, seen as one of the pioneers of Spacs.
Last year, Santander brought these strands together when it advised Norwegian-US Freyr Battery on buying the US solar manufacturing assets of China’s Trina Solar.
Credit Suisse’s Spac and ECM teams had been equity adviser and underwriter on Freyr’s IPO in 2021, while Santander’s renewables team had a strong relationship with Trina.
The deal was small but had an innovative structure that required input from Santander’s ECM, sector and M&A teams. It was also striking for another reason — it was executed in December and since President Trump’s announcement this year of tariffs on China, Santander has been receiving calls from other clients looking at similar transactions.
Santander managed to come second in Dealogic’s Americas IPO league table in the first quarter, and sixth globally. It was a very quiet market, but it still shows the bank has come a long way.
In corporate finance and DCM, Santander wants to be a top 10 or top 15 player across products, while maintaining its top three strength in structured finance, built on its expertise in project finance, real estate and infrastructure.
Levfin success
In leveraged finance, Santander has grown rapidly since the Credit Suisse team joined 18 months ago. From a standing start, the team has executed around 200 transactions, including 150 for financial sponsors. It hopes to hit $400m of global revenue by the end of this year.
Santander is keen to highlight the Credit Suisse effect in the US, but in Europe, its leveraged finance campaign began in 2019, when it had a 10-strong team in Madrid, focused mainly on mid-market real estate and infrastructure deals.
Building on this with hires in London, it grew the European team to 34 people, bringing it to the verge of the top 10. Then in October 2023 Santander hired Eduardo Trocha from Credit Suisse as co-head of European leveraged finance.
Trocha’s arrival has led to a reshuffling of the ranks in Europe, culminating in the departure of his co-head Louis L’Heureux, who had arrived from MUFG in 2020. L’Heureux joined Santander’s rival BBVA last month as head of leveraged finance EMEA.
Santander’s tailored approach is also evident in the UK, where it is trying to grow under Simon Gorringe, UK head of corporate finance.
Santander wants to win more market share but has no plans to mimic rivals by launching a corporate broking business.
In 2019, Santander signed an agreement with Peel Hunt, a UK mid-cap broker, whereby the Spanish bank would provide underwriting on ECM transactions. The deal preceded Peel Hunt’s IPO in 2021 and the end of the UK capital markets boom, but remains in place.
Santander is also ploughing its own furrow in research. Linares previously worked at JP Morgan, where he helped to build the equities business.
Santander has none of the legacy costs of its bigger US peers, and has avoided building costly infrastructure. Instead, last December, it struck strategic alliances with two specialist equity research boutiques, Telsey Advisory Group, which focuses on the consumer sector, and Vertical Research Partners for industrials and materials.
With Linares and Jones at the helm, the emphasis will remain on profitable, steady growth. In Europe, where the bank has 80 managing directors in global banking, in Madrid and London, Santander can grow its existing brand and capabilities.
The plan is to increase the number of bankers in its global industry groups from the present roughly 25 managing directors. But the pace will be measured.
“Our corporate finance capabilities are profitable and accretive,” said Jones. “Our whole success is predicated on high growth, high returns, generating excess profitability, and then we’re given the right by the organisation to reinvest that.”
But there’s no getting away from the fact that Santander’s success in CIB will be defined by its US expansion. Recruiting 150 bankers from a single organisation is the equivalent of a takeover, melding the aggressive Wall street approach of Credit Suisse with the long term commercial banking mindset of Santander.
Linares is correct to say that the CIB has the right mix of businesses. But ultimately the success of its overall strategy could depend on achieving the right cultural mix.