The bankers that define the decades: Emilio Botín, Santander

Illustration: Vince McIndoe

Realizing early on that banking was a business where scale mattered and diversification was essential, Emilio Botín turned a regional family firm from southern Europe into an unlikely new force in global banking. He was a master of the merger and trod a path that no other European bank has followed. But the pace of growth left challenges for the generation that followed.

Emilio Botín’s speech to the 2008 Euromoney awards dinner, where Santander was named best global bank, has gone down in banking folklore.