Every Monday morning, Emilio Botín, chairman of Grupo Santander, Spain’s biggest financial group, inspects the global ranking of the world’s largest banks.

In the past 12 months, Santander has overtaken Royal Bank of Scotland, Wells Fargo in the US, UBS of Switzerland and Mitsubishi in Japan to become the eighth-largest bank by market value with a capitalisation of $136bn – up $16bn in a year.