Santander posiciona su gestora ante la nueva cuenta de inversión

Santander Asset Management is bolstering its team of equity fund managers and consolidating its European equity fund management in Spain. The Spanish bank has made several hires and moves within its equity fund manager team to get ahead of a new European equity investment account driven by the government. Santander Asset Management has added four new analysts and managers to its equity fund manager team, bringing the total to eleven professionals managing over 7,000 million euros in funds.

Rocío Maldonado heads this area. The manager has signed Verónica Pérez-Campanero, who previously worked at Ennismore Fund Management and specializes in European equity, along with three others from rival firms and other areas of the bank. In addition to these changes, the entity has decided to focus its European equity fund management in Spain, including both international funds domiciled in Luxembourg and local vehicles and mandates that the group previously managed from different geographies like the UK, Portugal, and Chile.

The Spanish manager aims to enhance the management of its star European equity fund, the Santander AM European Equity, an active management fund that aims to outperform the reference index in the long run. Ultimately, these moves are meant to strengthen the asset manager's capabilities in European equity funds at a time when mobilizing savings towards long-term investment has gained traction on the European agenda.

In recent months, several countries have launched various vehicles to encourage retail savings towards European equity investments, incentivized with fiscal advantages. This is the case of Spain, where the government approved the Spanish Investment Account last few weeks, prompting banks and managers to prepare their offer and teams to offer it to clients.

"The recent approval of the savings investment account opens a new avenue to encourage savers' participation in European capital markets, with European equity funds as one of the assets expected to play a structural role in channeling that savings towards European businesses," Santander AM explains. Santander Asset Management has a global asset base valued at 295.000 million euros.

It operates in a dozen countries and manages investment funds, pension plans, institutional mandates, and alternative investments.