Ana Botín says she will be the last of her family to lead Santander bank

The announcement

Ana Botín, chair of Banco Santander, told the Financial Times that she will be the last member of her family to lead the bank. The Botín family has led Santander since 1909, and the bank was founded in 1857. Botín has been chair for 12 years, taking over after her father Emilio Botín died in 2014 while still holding the post at 79. In the interview, published on 10 November 2026, she put it plainly:

“There will be no other Botín leading Santander.”

She is 66 years old, and friends and senior insiders expect her to remain at the bank until her mid-seventies. The Financial Times describes the family's reign as bringing immense wealth and privilege, as well as access to the highest reaches of political and corporate power.

Her children and the board

None of her three children intends to take over the top job, and she said she would not want any of them to work with her because the job is very hard. The eldest, Felipe Morenés Botín, is a partner and co-founder of Stoneshield Capital, a firm in which Franklin Templeton was announced in early September 2026 to be taking a majority stake. Morenés left banking in 2013 after five years at UBS, then spent more than four years at the Lone Star fund before founding Stoneshield in 2017. He joined the board of Santander México as an alternate independent director in late 2023, and he is the only one of the three holding an official role at the bank. Botín still considers it important for a Botín to sit on the board, arguing that long-term values and vision matter more than a family standing behind an institution.

A possible move to non-executive chair

Botín's exit would not be immediate. She has discussed with a handful of close confidants the possibility of giving up executive power to become non-executive chair, which the FT calls unlikely for several years. A person familiar with the bank's governance said it would not be surprising if she moved to a non-executive role within five years. Such a shift would mean changing Santander's governance model, creating a non-executive leadership post and widening the powers of the chief executive, as most European banks already do. The European Central Bank recommends that executive tasks sit with the chief executive, with the chair limited mainly to representation.

The bank she will leave behind

Santander is worth about 165,000 million euros in market capitalisation, and it is continental Europe's most valuable bank, ahead of UBS, BNP Paribas and UniCredit. Over the past two years the bank delivered record profits and large shareholder returns, helped by higher interest rates, while a series of deals refocused it on its biggest markets. Santander says Botín's goal is 500 million clients, against 186 million today, and the bank aims to exceed 20,000 million euros in profit in 2028. The family has exerted outsized influence over the group despite owning only a small fraction of its shares in recent decades.

Current186

Target500

Current

186 million clients

Target

500 million clients

Data from the article text