Santander’s UK boss finally agrees to copy his Spanish colleagues in donating £1m to charity
Santander’s UK chief exec Nathan Bostock will donate £1m to a charity buying medical equipment for the coronavirus pandemic
Santander’s UK chief executive Nathan Bostock has finally followed his colleagues in Spain and agreed to donate £1million to charity.
The British banker will give the money to the fund which Spanish group Banco Santander has launched to help buy medical equipment to tackle the coronavirus pandemic.
Bostock’s agreement to give up a chunk of his wages comes weeks after Banco Santander’s group chairman Ana Botin and chief executive Jose Antonio Alvarez volunteered 50 per cent of their entire year’s pay to the fund.
Last year Botin was awarded £3.8million, while Alvarez bagged £2.8million.
Bostock, 59, was eligible to earn up to £6.15million this year, but insiders said that the £1million donation will likely amount to around a quarter of his full salary given current performance.
Lenders came under pressure from the Bank of England last week to moderate pay, in order to preserve cash to help boost the economy in the face of the coronavirus crisis.
Campaigners and MPs warned the banks that the public would not look kindly on the usual multi-million pound executive pay packages, at a time when many of their customers were struggling to get by.
And investors who lost out when the lenders cut more than £7.5billion in dividends last week in order to cut their costs were keen that banks shared the pain.