as a result the Company received a regulatorynon-objection for its capital distribution plans in both 2018 and 2019, allowing it to return a dividend in 2018 for the first time since 2011. It has also made significant lending and other commitments to the communities in which it operates and in 2018 achieved an upgrade to its Community Reinvestment Act rating.
Santander’s U.S. strategy remains focused on seizing organic growth opportunities and completing its regulatory remediation initiatives while further integrating operations and support functions to improve efficiency. In addition, Santander US will continue to leverage the strength of the Santander Group while investing in improving the customer experience through both digital and physical channels. In the medium-term the Group aims to grow the return on tangible equity in the US from 6% to11-13%.
Banco Santander Executive Chairman, Ana Botin, who recently joined the Santander US and SBNA boards, said:“Tim and Mahesh have proven themselves to be excellent leaders with tremendous expertise and talent. We see significant opportunity for growth in the U.S. market and I am proud that we have internal successors who are so well prepared to lead this next stage of our strategy and look forward to working with them even more closely in the years ahead. In the past four years we have made outstanding progress in addressing the legacy regulatory issues and laying the foundation for future growth and on behalf of the Board and the Group, I want to extend our thanks to Scott and wish him all the best for this next stage of his career.”
SHUSA and SBNA Boards Chairman, Tim Ryan, said,“The leadership team and employees of Santander US have moved our US businesses forward in operating at large financial institution standards, and this work will continue with the leadership appointments we announce today. Santander US is fortunate to have a deep, strong management team, and we will carry on our work of meeting our regulatory goals and improving customer satisfaction in all our businesses.”
Additional details regarding the appointments announced today will be filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission by Santander Consumer USA Holdings Inc. and SHUSA.
Banco Santander (SAN SM, STD US, BNC LN) is a leading retail and commercial bank, founded in 1857 and headquartered in Spain. It has a meaningful presence in 10 core markets in Europe and the Americas, and is the largest bank in the euro zone by market capitalization. Its purpose is to help people and businesses prosper in a simple, personal and fair way. Santander is building a more responsible bank and has made a number of commitments to support this objective, including raising over €120 billion in green financing between 2019 and 2025, as well as financially empowering more than 10 million people over the same period. At the end of September 2019, Banco Santander had EUR 1.04 trillion in customer funds, 144 million customers, of which 21 million are loyal and 36.2 million are digital (51% of active customers), 12,700 branches and 200,000 employees. Banco Santander made underlying profit of EUR 6,180 million in the first nine months of 2019, an increase of 2% compared to the same period the previous year.
About Santander Holdings USA, Inc.
Santander Holdings USA, Inc. (“Santander US”) is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Madrid-based Banco Santander, S.A. (NYSE: SAN) (“Santander”), one of the most respected banking groups in the world with more than 144 million customers in the U.K., Europe, Latin America and the U.S. As the intermediate holding company for
