Trump’s row with Spain could stall Santander-Webster deal, analyst says

By Tatiana Bautzer

NEW YORK, March 3 (Reuters) – Santander’s $12.2 billion acquisition of U.S. regional lender Webster Financial could be stalled by President Donald Trump’s decision to suspend trade with Spain, Wells Fargo analyst Mike Mayo said in a note to clients on Tuesday.

Mayo downgraded Webster’s stock to underweight, citing potential hurdles to approve the deal, which was announced last month.

“The U.S. president today said trade with Spain will halt,” Mayo wrote. “We extrapolate this comment to mean that U.S. regulatory approval for Banco Santander to acquire Webster will be incrementally harder to obtain.”

Santander, which is Spain’s largest bank, struck the deal in an effort to join the top 10 retail and commercial banks in the U.S. If completed, it would give Santander a combined U.S. balance sheet of approximately $327 billion in assets.

Asked about the issue, Santander Executive Chair Ana Botin said she expects Spain and the U.S. to recover quickly.

“Spain and the U.S. have had a great long-term relationship and that is where we are going back to. But we are surely living in extraordinary times,” she said during an interview with Bloomberg TV.

Botin did not discuss the relationship with regulators or the deal approval, but said Santander will keep serving its 5 million American customers.

Escalating U.S.-Spain trade tensions would, in the best scenario, extend the time to approve the deal, Mayo wrote. A potential denial could attract other banks to acquire Webster, but that could cut the deal price by 10%, he said.

Webster’s shares were down 3.2% in late afternoon trading, while Santander’s shares closed more than 6% lower.

(Reporting by Tatiana Bautzer, Editing by Franklin Paul, Lananh Nguyen, Paul Simao and Stephen Coates)