The head of Santander UK has said the bank group should avoid “putting a lot more capital” into the UK because of the country’s high tax burden and the rising bill for compensating victims of fraud.
Mike Regnier said the bank could not deliver the returns that shareholders in its parent group expected “even in a really good year”, because its operations faced higher costs than those in other jurisdictions.
The chief executive told the Commons Treasury select committee that Banco Santander made decisions on where to invest capital “on a weekly basis” and the UK division faced difficulties because “equity and capital is pretty fungible”.
Banco Santander, which has operations in more than ten countries, invested in the UK when it bought Abbey National
