Santander Diversity Provides Some Downside Protection

Globally, Santander is one of the few banks that have successfully acquired and integrated retail banking operations across borders. Santander’s integration strategy is to keep the front-end, client-facing activities firmly under the control of local managers with good insight into the opportunities and risks of their home markets. The back-end processing and systems of the business is where Santander sees the opportunity to integrate operations and achieve cost savings. The firm has a record of bolting on acquisitions to a common platform and extracting synergies.