First woman head of a major City bank is the boss's daughter

12 April 2012

London is to get its first female chief of a major bank with the appointment of Ana Patricia Botin to head Santander UK, owner of the former Abbey, Alliance & Leicester and Bradford & Bingley branch networks.

The Spanish giant is also completing a £1.65billion deal to buy 318 branches from Royal Bank of Scotland.

Ms Botin, 50, is the glamorous, tough-talking daughter of Santander's billionaire chairman, Emilio Botin. Married with three children, she is the most powerful woman in Spanish business and is ranked 38th in Forbes magazine's list of the world's top 100 most powerful women.

Her relocation marks a radical shift in UK banking. Managements that had been in place for years at the top of the High Street banks have been swept away. She succeeds Antonio Horta-Osario, who was today announced as the new boss of Lloyds Banking Group, replacing Eric Daniels.

Part of her brief will be to continue bringing together under one umbrella Santander's different operations and to prepare the UK arm for a likely £20billion stock market flotation.

No large British bank has ever had a female chief and it's hard to under-estimate the impact her elevation may have on a City that is still conservative and sexist. It would be wrong, though, to assume that Ms Botin's promotion is entirely down to her father.

While the connection undoubtedly helps, in Spain she is regarded as formidable in her own right. She is credited with being among those who have led Santander's charge up the world banking ladder.

Educated at Harvard, she spent seven years working for JP Morgan in investment banking in New York. Back in Spain she continued her father's work in modernising what had been a hitherto, typically sleepy, Spanish family enterprise, taking over banks around the world and playing a leading role in Spain's privatisation programme.

She has a reputation for speaking as she finds - sometimes so directly it hurts. One of six children, she is regarded as being the most like her father, far and away Spain's most successful businessman. The Spanish magazine Mujer Hoy has described her as "cold, tough and ruthless".

Her mother, Paloma O'Shea, is a huge patron of the arts. Another Botin daughter, Carmen, was married to golfer Seve Ballesteros until their divorce in 2004. Ana Patricia is herself a former junior golf champion.

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