December 7, 2009

Santander named Global Bank of the Year

by Gill Montia

Story link: Santander named Global Bank of the Year

Banco Santander has been named Global Bank of the Year at the 2009 Banker magazine’s Bank of the Year Awards.

The accolade celebrates the achievements of the most innovative, dedicated, creative, resilient and ambitious banks in different regions of the world, including central and eastern Europe, Asia, The Americas, Africa and the Middle East.

Santander was applauded for its aggressive sales strategy, solid risk management and tight cost control; judges also noted its “very basic approach to banking” which many banks seem unable to emulate.

Unicredit scooped an award for central and eastern Europe (CEE), for sheer consistency of performance as recession hit hard in the majority of CEE economies.

Standard Chartered Bank received country awards for Hong Kong, Brunei, Nepal and South Korea, and Itaú unibanco for The Americas.

Banco Santander, which owns Abbey, Alliance & Leicester and Bradford & Bingley, reported attributable profit of €2.2 billion for the third quarter of 2009.

The performance came in level with a year earlier, leaving the group on track to achieve its earnings target of €8.8 billion in 2009.

The group’s Abbey subsidiary continued to see strong growth, with over 800,000 new bank accounts opened in the nine months to the end of September.

The lender also extended its share of the UK mortgage market to 20.5%, achieving £5.1 billion of net lending in the first three quarters of the year.