Santander will meet targets with Saenz at the helm

 

Emilio Botin, Chairman of Spain's Banco Santander, today slated doubts expressed about the country's solvency as being exaggerated. He was giving a press conference to report the Bank's Q4 figures, commenting "Frivolous parallels have been established with other economies that have much more fragile public finances and banking systems than ours."

He continued to describe how he expects that the spread between German and Spanish bond yields will soon go to halve. The Bank has weathered the global financial storm quite well, netting significant profits so far, but it has seen its financing costs soar in recent months along with the interest rate Spain pays to finance itself, putting it at a disadvantage in competing with other world banks.

Spain's cost of borrowing increased following the Irish bailout as its banks faced rising bad debts from the collapse of the property market.

Botin gave the press conference alongside the Bank's Chief Executive, Alfredo Saenz, ahead of an expected ruling from the Supreme Court that may prohibit the CEO from working in the banking industry again. This follows a court judging him to be guilty of fraud from a case dating back to the 1990's when Saenz was then Chairman of Banesto.

Botin expressed his support in his CEO, and confidence that no such ban would be forthcoming :"I'm convinced that we will meet our annual targets because we still have the best team of managers, led by the best chief executive of the banking sector", he said.