LEX How lovely to imagine Santander’s executives across from their wild-eyed counterparts at Royal Bank of Scotland and Fortis as they carved up ABN Amro. “Please take most of Europe and Asia. We only ask for the Brazilian bit and we’ll be on our way.” Today, RBS and Fortis are mere case studies. Yesterday, on the other hand, the listing of 16 per cent of Santander Brazil gave it an implied market capitalisation of €34bn, just shy of Citigroup’s.
Santander is playing Brazil well. The €12bn for ABN Real equated to only 11.5 times 2008 earnings, comparing favourably with other Brazilian banks even before the re-rating of the sector. Overnight, Santander became top-three in loans, deposits and branches. Sure, it might have eked out a few more reals from investors – the offer price equating to 2.6 times tangible book value is 18 per cent below where some peers are trading, according to KBW. But that is negligible considering the Bovespa index has rallied 60 per cent this year.
