The German Activities of Swedish Bank SEB Sold to the Spanish Santander
- Santander, one of the largest banks in Spain, bought SEB’s 173 retail banking branches in Germany. The transaction cost 555 million euros and asserts the bank’s will to become a leader in the European Market. According to Santander, this purchase would provide them with one million additional customers (among which 10,000 small and medium businesses), a portfolio of about 8.5 billion euros in outstanding loans (82% of which are mortgages) and 4.6 billion euros in deposits. This acquisition was agreed to on July 12th and should be concluded between the end of 2010 and early 2011.
- SEB’s leaving the German market follows the sale of its French activities to Société Générale. In addition, on June 24th, Santander announced it intended to purchase 3.2 billion dollars in car loans from CitiFinancial Auto, a subsidiary of the American Citigroup. This transaction should be concluded towards the end of the third quarter of 2010. Furthermore, the British subsidiary, Santander UK, offered to buy 318 branches of RBS’s Williams & Glyn network (see the June 2010 issue of the ADN’co Watch).
- In closing, it should be noted that Santander reported net profit of 8.89 billion euros in 2009 and expects similar results for 2010.