The purchase of Banco Popular by Santander at stake thousands of jobs

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Madrid, June 10 (EFE) .- The purchase of Banco Popular Banco Santander puts an end to the doubts of customers of the first entity, which in recent weeks had been withdrawn massively group funds, however serious opens questions about the future of thousands of employees.

Last Wednesday, Banco Santander announced the acquisition of Banco Popular for the symbolic price of one euro after European authorities to find the infeasibility of the entity independently.

Although the People's Bank continued to meet minimum levels of solvency, liquidity was in question and decided it was best to intervene to protect depositors and sell the company to the highest bidder.

In this case, the Banco Santander, because although it has done with the People for one euro, has enough muscle to provide immediate liquidity to the company demanded and the ability to carry out a multimillion-dollar capital with which to clean up battered intervened bank balance.

This will likely defend the thesis that next Monday in Congress Economy Minister Luis de Guindos, who appears at his request to discuss the intervention and sale of Banco Popular, which involves the loss of money of all shareholders.

According to the unions, a bad management has made it impossible to maintain the People's Bank as an independent entity, which is what they would have preferred, aware that the purchase by a Spanish competitor will involve significant workforce adjustments and branches, as the joint network adds more than 4,500 offices.

The first contacts between Santander and workers' representatives have occurred this week, but according to recognize different sources, more appointments will be necessary to refine the cuts and how to carry them out.

The challenge is to reduce a staff of more than 10,600 workers and about 23,000 Popular Santander Spain, after recently have left about 2,600 workers in the first entity and about 2,500 in the second.

But in the group chaired by Ana Botin consider workers People are key to achieving the goal of not losing a single customer, indeed, the idea is to recover those who have been going in recent weeks, and thus its deposits.

Why the president of Santander Spain, Rodrigo Echenique, and the CEO of this subsidiary, Rami Aboukhair, undertook to encourage the 100 top executives of Banco Popular of the importance of keeping customers.

So much so that the last group an incentive plan that rewards workers who get more involved and profitable customers, while approving new leaders on both networks.

Rami Aboukhair will remain the head of the business of Santander Spain, but there will be responsible for corporate banking, José Corral, and other retail banking, Javier Hidalgo.

The latter will depend on the new network manager Popular Spain, Alberto Delgado, Santander and Spain, Manuel Iturbe.

They will ensure that employees are aware that the new group will be the first in the country by number of active and will have a share in the business of SMEs of between 20 and 25%, without ignoring that mergers always lead jobs ahead.

Another challenge of integration is Popular in Santander satisfy many customers who prepare claims for swindling investors since they were shareholders of the bank, they participated in its last capital, and now have lost all their money.