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Santander’s UK chair William Vereker has resigned, exposing a rift with the bank’s Spanish parent and its executive chair Ana Botín, according to people familiar with the matter.
Vereker, who has served as chair of the Spanish lender’s UK business since 2020, previously informed the board that he had intended to step down later this year, according to one of the people.
The bank announced Vereker’s departure on Tuesday after the Financial Times approached Santander with a request for comment.
His departure comes as Santander explores a number of strategic options for its UK business, which could include a potential exit from the British retail market, the FT previously reported.
Vereker, a former senior executive at UBS and business envoy of ex-prime minister Theresa May, had clashed with the group’s leadership in Madrid over governance and resourcing, the people familiar with the situation said.
Botín has sometimes seen the UK board as obstructive, according to two people familiar with the Madrid-London dynamic. Another person familiar with the bank said that power at Santander was “very centralised” in Madrid.
As a subsidiary overseen by the Bank of England, Santander UK is required to have a board that is separate from the group, with key positions filled by independent directors.
Vereker’s exit will create another issue for the Spanish lender, which is struggling to boost returns at the UK unit relative to some of the group’s other markets. It is also facing exposure to a British court ruling about the possible mis-selling of car loans.
The UK unit’s balance sheet has shrunk in recent years, with total assets falling from £315bn in 2017 to £275bn at the end of September.
While Botín last week said that the UK would remain a “core market” for Santander, people familiar with the matter said a potential sale of the high street bank was not being ruled out if a suitor approached it with an attractive offer.
Francisco Riquel, an analyst at Alantra Equities, said Santander “doesn’t have a good retail franchise” in the UK, adding: “It’s basically a monoline mortgage lender. Eighty-five per cent of the loan book is mortgages. They’ve been trying to become a universal retail bank. They have not managed to.”
Any move by Santander to further scale back its UK business would come at an awkward time for the government, which is trying to revive the country’s ailing economy. Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos last week, chancellor Rachel Reeves said that boosting economic growth was “the number one mission of this government”.
Meanwhile, Nicky Morgan, a former Conservative minister, who sits on Santander UK’s board and in the House of Lords, is set to be appointed as the board’s senior independent director and will lead the search for Vereker’s replacement, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Vereker, a contemporary of ex-prime minister Boris Johnson at the elite British public school Eton, could have remained on the board until 2029 under the UK’s corporate governance code.
