Santander chief is paid £2m to relocate

Santander’s UK finance chief paid £500,000 in relocation expenses in each of last four years

Santander’s UK finance chief has been paid £500,000 in relocation expenses in each of the last four years, documents show.

Duke Dayal moved from Boston in the US to London in 2019. Companies often compensate executives for changing jobs to cover extra costs such as travel, buying or renting a house, and paying school fees. But these payments are usually one-offs.

Switch: Santander said the relocation allowance was ‘to support [Dayal’s] move… and the transition’

Dayal was also the Spanish-owned lender’s highest paid director last year, taking home £3.5 million – more than the UK division’s chief executive Mike Regnier, who got £2.4 million.

Since moving to the UK, Dayal has been paid a total of £11 million.

Santander has been criticised for not passing on interest rate rises to savers. Last year, it raked in £4.8 billion in net interest income – the difference between what it pays savers and charges borrowers. This was £475 million more than in 2021.

Santander said the relocation allowance was ‘to support [Dayal’s] move …and the transition’.