Lloyds Banking Group PLC, Britain’s biggest mortgage lender, named Antonio Horta-Osorio, head of Banco Santander SA’s UK unit, as chief executive officer, replacing Eric Daniels.
He will join Lloyds “early” next year before becoming CEO on March 1, the London-based lender said in a statement yesterday.
Daniels, 59, led Lloyds’ takeover of HBOS PLC in September 2008, a purchase that forced the lender to seek a ￡17 billion (US$27 billion) taxpayer-funded rescue. He said in September he would step down within 12 months after the bank returned to profit. Lloyds on Tuesday forecast a “good” financial performance for this year.
Horta-Osorio, 46, has overseen Santander’s expansion in Britain. Since 2008, the Santander, Spain-based bank has acquired British banks hit by financial crisis, including Alliance & Leicester PLC, as well as parts of Bradford & Bingley PLC and Royal Bank of Scotland Group PLC to add to the Abbey unit it bought in 2004. The bank is preparing to sell a stake in its UK division in an initial public offering (IPO) in the first part of next year.
Santander “might struggle to IPO Abbey with an unfamiliar” CEO, Bruce Packard, an analyst at Seymour Pierce Ltd in London, wrote in a note to clients yesterday.
“From a Lloyds perspective, we think he is a credible external appointment,” Packard said.
Horta-Osorio began his career at Citibank Portugal, where he was head of capital markets, according to Santander’s Web site. He worked for Goldman Sachs Group Inc in New York and London in corporate finance and in 1993 joined Santander has head of Banco Santander de Negocios Portugal.
He joined Abbey as a non-executive director in November 2004 and became CEO of the division in August 2006. He is a member of the management committee of Banco Santander, Spain’s biggest bank.
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