ANA BOTIN Chief Executive, Santander Investment Fast-talking and hard-charging, Ana Patricia Botin doesn't lack for bravado. As the head of investment banking for Spain's largest bank, Banco Santander, Botin, 36, is gunning to make Santander Investment No.1 in Latin America and a strong competitor in other emerging markets, including Eastern Europe and Asia. ''We're not afraid at all of big American banks,'' she says. ''We can be as good as they are. We have more local presence.'' Strong words. But there's no doubt Harvard University-educated Botin has been a major catalyst in the transformation of Santander into a global bank. Executing the strategy of her father, Banco Santander Chairman D. Emilio Botin, she has invested some $3.5 billion over the past two years to build a Latin American empire that includes nine retail banks and seven investment banks with total assets of $45 billion. Wall Street experience--seven years at J.P. Morgan & Co.--gave Botin a keen sense of what it would take to compete--such as the ''sophisticated U.S.-style financial products'' she offers clients. Lately, Botin has zeroed in on huge Spanish privatizations, becoming the global coordinator for some $10.4 billion in equity underwritings this year alone. Now, she aims to do the same in Latin America. In conservative Spanish banking circles, Botin's raw energy and Wall Street manners sometimes chafe. ''Everyone in the bank is terrified of Ana Patricia,'' says Aurelio Medel, banking specialist at financial daily Cinco Dias. ''She says what she thinks, and that sometimes hurts.'' Still, the betting is that Botin, a mother of three, could become one of the first women to head a major bank anywhere in the world. By Gail Edmondson in Paris Return to main story

Updated Oct. 16, 1997 by bwwebmaster
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