There were a lot of dark suits and shiny hair at the Mandarin Oriental in Boston earlier this month at a "conference" put on by Sovereign/Santander.
There were lots of bankers there, and many of them wore Sovereign/Santander name tags.
A morning session featuring New England Patriots President Jonathan Kraft and an afternoon session during which Gov. Deval Patrick and Sovereign Bank President and CEO and Santander U.S. Country Head Jorge Moran fielded questions from Boston Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Paul Guzzi were both well attended.
The event was billed as a conference about doing business overseas. But in reality, it was about Sovereign Santander pumping itself up in its new U.S. home and whacking about the shrubbery for all the clients it could flush from the scrub.
And Sovereign knows it.
Patrick, who promised not to run for a third term in office, is politically invincible. Moran, whose bank made Boston its U.S. headquarters just last year, can’t think of anything critical to say about the city.
The things he likes about Boston?
"Education, wealth, the entrepreneurial spirit … I have to add, I am a Patriots supporter," Moran said.
The talk went on for an hour and its tone rarely shifted from laudatory or deferential. On the occasion that it did, it was managed with aplomb by Patrick, who he urged the city’s press to report on some of the "good news."
But after the talk was through, an executive from each of the countries in which Santander does business was available for a 10-15 minute one-on-one with local businesses.
Those sessions were in high demand, even as an early cocktail hour commenced. Jessica Crimmins, Sovereign’s head of marketing, said the bank didn’t expect to close any business during the sessions – but that "eye-to-eye" contact never fails to leave business owners with a good feeling about their banker, or perhaps more accurately, their potential new banker.
Moran talked about "building the right foundation for the brand." Banco Santander, Sovereign’s Spanish parent, is among the largest banks in the world but is the new kid in town here.
The bank’s small- and medium-sized business clients and prospective clients want to do more international business, Edvaldo Morata, Sovereign’s head of corporate banking, told Banker & Tradesman. And the bank wants more businesses "to realize how important the connections of Santander are in the global markets."
