Abbey’s Spanish parent Santander has told the Financial Times it has identified the bank’s financial markets division, which manufactures its in-house and third party structured products, as a key growth area and potential manufacturing centre for products to be sold throughout the Santander group."…Santander still has a low percentage of business coming from markets and [London] is a centre for financial markets. There's a big opportunity here for Abbey and for Santander," said Abbey chief executive Francisco Gómez Roldán.
No further details were available as SRP went to press. Growth is expected to be organic, rather than the results of acquisitions, however.
Abbey scaled back its financial markets operations after derivatives losses in 2003.
