Botin’s Vision of Future Pays Off for Santander in Age of Covid-19
- Banks built low-rise, out-of-town corporate centers in Madrid
- Employees can avoid use of public transport, crowded elevators
The Faro buildings is seen amongst olive trees, some over a thousand years old, inside the Santander Ciudad Financiera in Boadilla del Monte outside Madrid, May 29.
Photographer: Paul Hanna/BloombergAs global banks grapple with how and when to safely bring back thousands of employees after the Covid-19 outbreak, Spain’s two biggest lenders will be spared some of the headaches preoccupying rivals.
About two decades ago, Banco Santander SA’s late chairman Emilio Botin returned from a trip to the offices of First Union Corp. (now part of Wells Fargo & Co) in North Carolina with an idea about the bank’s future: to merge 20 offices Santander had in Madrid into a vast campus. He commissioned Pritzker Prize-winning architect Kevin Roche, who in 2002 began to build a financial city west of Madrid. The move set a trend, with Spain’s second-largest lender BBVA starting its own complex in 2010 north of the capital.