After losing its UK boss to Lloyds Banking Group, Santander today revealed just how much its operations in this country helped to counter a fall in its domestic Spanish market last year.
Santander UK - which bought up Abbey, Alliance & Leicester and the good bits of Bradford & Bingley - has been run by Ana Botín, daughter of the chairman Emilio Botín, since António Horta-Osório was poached by Lloyds at the end of last year.
Today she made it clear she is ready to do a deal with the Treasury on lending to small businesses despite Santander UK having dropped out of Project Merlin. She said: "This is an important part of Santander UK's strategy and a vital sector for the growth of the economy.
"Our aim is to increase our lending to UK businesses and create new jobs as we open more business centres to serve them."
The bank said its lending to SMEs rose 26% to £8.5 billion last year and its profits rose by 11% to £1.7 billion. Bad debt provisions were down by 17% at £651 million. But with lower net mortgage lending and higher costs to attract savers there has been pressure on margins which Botín warned would continue this year.
The parent bank Santander said net profits fell 8.5% to 8.2 billion (£6.9 billion) as most of its European operations lost money in the final quarter of last year.
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