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Santander Declines to Sell Historic Building in Downtown Lisbon, Considers Museum

1 August 2018

The bank had already received several offers for the property.

Santander has declined to sell the bank’s historic building in downtown Lisbon on Rua do Ouro, although it has already received several offers. The bank is now considering whether to turn the property into a museum.

“The answer is no, the building is not for sale, and we do not intend to sell it,” António Vieira Monteiro said when asked about a possible sale of the property.

The executive, speaking at a press conference in Lisbon on the bank’s first semester results, said that location is “the bank’s historic headquarters.”

“Therefore, we will not sell it,” he said.

Nevertheless, that building “will be utilised in the future” and, “we may convert the building into a museum or something like that,” he said.

The bank currently has 5,000 assets in its real estate portfolio, including properties located across the country and of different types, the executive stated, noting that some of the properties resulted from the bank’s acquisition of the former Banco Popular.

So far, the institution has raised about 85 million euros from the sale of real estate, Mr Vieira Monteiro said.

During his presentation, Santander’s president also referred to the merger with Banco Popular, which began last December, saying that the process had “positive results” for that institution’s former employees.

“All the people who came from Popular to work with us […], at the time of the merger, were brought on in conditions similar to that of Santander’s other employees, with advantages compared to other banks,” Mr Vieira Monteiro noted.

These advantages include, for example, the adoption of €1,200 as the minimum wage for those employees, as well as promotions and salary increases of between 0.75% and 2.5%.

“We conducted the merger with the intention of creating the best conditions for them to feel at home in their new jobs,” he said, adding that the process is complete.

However, an “integration of the computer systems has yet to come.”

Mr Vieira Monteiro denied that refused that there had been any branch closures in the period, referring to “mergers [of agencies]”, since “Popular’s agencies are being placed within the physical space” of Santander.

Accordingly, the bank currently has 662 branches, up from 585 in June 2017 and down from 670 at the time of December’s merger with Banco Popular.

As for employees, the bank currently has 6,745, up from a total of approximately 5,960 in June 2017, and slightly down from a high of 6,781 in December, at the time of the merger.

Original Story: Diário de Notícias / Lusa

Translation: Richard Turner