Andrea Orcel and Ana Botín face off in Madrid courtroom over pay row
UniCredit chief is claiming tens of millions of euros in compensation for Santander’s aborted job offer
Santander’s executive chair Ana Botín said her bank had never given Andrea Orcel a contract to become its chief executive, as the two former friends faced off against each other in a Madrid courtroom.
Orcel is claiming tens of millions of euros in compensation from Santander for reversing its plans to hire him in 2019, in the long-delayed hearing that began on Wednesday.
However, Botín denied that an offer letter issued to the Italian banker, now chief executive of UniCredit, constituted a contract.
On arrival on Wednesday morning, Botín greeted Orcel, a former UBS executive who was previously a longtime adviser to Santander, and the two sat four seats apart in the front row of the courtroom.
Under questioning from Orcel’s lawyers, Botín argued that the offer letter issued to him in September 2018 did not clearly define the buyout terms for a payout he was forgoing from UBS and therefore was not a contract.
Orcel, who is not due to give testimony, said he attended the hearing “out of respect to the process and the judge”.
He added: “This has always been about integrity and ensuring that the truth was put on record and I think that we will achieve that today.”
On the eve of the hearing, Orcel halved his claim for compensation from Santander from €112m to between €57.6m and €67.1m, according to two people familiar with the matter.