EMILIO BOTIN, the chairman of Banco Santander Central Hispano, will today promise the union representing Abbey’s 25,000-strong workforce that he will limit staff cuts to less than 3,000, if shareholders approve his £8 billion bid for the high street bank.
The redundancies figure high on a list of union concerns prepared by Abbey’s management for consideration at the meeting today.
A spokeswoman for the Abbey union said that they would also be quizzing the Santander chairman about the Spanish bank’s sales-driven culture amid claims by a leading Spanish academic that the two banks could face a potentially crippling clash of cultures. More than 70 per cent of Santander’s Spanish staff are on performance-related pay deals and bonus incentives can make up more than 50 per cent of total salary.
That is at odds with the deals currently on offer at Abbey, where only around 7 per cent of pay is linked to performance. However, Santander aims to increase sales by the Abbey staff in a bid to improve profitability.
Robert Tornabell, who works at Esade, one of Spain’s leading business schools, said that Santander’s pay structure could prove difficult to implement at the Abbey. He said: “Santander is a very tough bank. It is very dynamic and aggressive in reducing overheads at the banks that it takes over.”
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The professor, who provided training for Señor Botin and some of his team, added that the hours worked by middle and upper managers at Santander were longer than the hours worked by their counterparts at the Abbey. He said: “In Spain, ten-hour days among middle and higher management are not uncommon. However, they are well rewarded.”
He went on: “The aggressive sales culture has been a strong contributor to Santander’s success.”
The union spokeswoman told The Times last night: “We would have concerns about the introduction of new pay deals.”
Commission-driven selling has contributed to many of the recent financial scandals in the UK, in particular pension mis-selling.