Banking has been a passion for António Horta Osório from an early age. During the final year of his studies he sent out a letter with a copy of his CV to the main Portuguese and foreign banks operating in Portugal. His received three replies and ended up opting for CitiBank, at the time considered an excellent choice in banking management and which enabled him to continue working as an assistant at the Universidade Católica.

It was seven years later whilst working in London for Golman Sachs that he made his fist contact with the Spanish Santander banking group. He was head hunted and invited by Emílio Botín, president of the Santander Group, and his daughter Patrícia, to form an Investment Bank in Portugal. At only 28, he had just completed an MBA at the INSEAd business management school in France, rated as the best facility of its kind in Europe. The last thing on his mind was that twelve years down the line he would become president of the board of the Totta banking group.
The bank, formerly known as Totta e Açores, was later acquired by the Santander group from the now deceased businessman António Champalimaud who was then director general of Santander Spain, the largest financial group on the Iberian Peninsula and a non-executive director Abbey National in the UK which had also been purchased by the Santander Group.

Returning to Portugal to create an investment bank from scratch armed with his team and a sound business plan, Horta Osório believed that with a powerful and dedicated shareholder like Santander behind him, plus a 30 million dollar start-up fund, the opportunity was too good to turn down. At the time he felt that the challenge would push him to his very limits. “I was scared,” he admits. But friends and colleagues advised him to hold on. “And, as you don’t get two cracks of the same whip, I accepted.” The Santander de Negócios bank began operating in 1993 and by the following year, Horta Osório’s team had already won the “Euromoney” prize for the best foreign bank operating in Portugal.

Three years later he upped sticks with his family and moved to São Paulo, Brazil. His boss at Santander had given him a new mission: to manage the investment bank and, at the same time, enter the Brazilian retail banking market. At the time, the Brazilians had never heard of the Santander group. “They asked us if we were from the Banco Santo André, the name of a little town close to São Paulo,” he remembers. Ten years on, Santander is the third largest private bank in Brazil and the leading financial group in Latin America.

Three years after setting up the Brazilian project it was time to return once again to Portugal. Santander had just agreed with António Champalimaud on the purchase of his 40% controlling share of the Mundial Confiança financial group. The deal however was initially blocked by the then minister for finance, Sousa Franco, and the case was only resolved after the European Commission had intervened.  “Those were difficult months,” he admits. “It felt like an eternity.”

The complicated affair was eventually settled but the final transaction ended up somewhat differently to that originally planned. Instead of acquiring António Champalimaud’s 40% share in the group, which included Mundial Confiança, Sotto Mayor, Totta and the CPP, the Spaniards only ended the deal with a majority share in Totta and CPP. “No one knows how it managed to change from the initial plan. What we can say is that it worked out very well and that it has been a positive experience.”

A sense of accomplishment
Objectivity and ambition when defining goals plus hard work, determination, organisation and insight when choosing your team are, according to Horta Osório, the most important ingredients in order to feel not so much a manager of success, but rather “a successful manager”. In his opinion being successful is feeling a sense of accomplishment in what you do. “I really enjoy managing and I see management as teamwork.”

Having lived in London, New York, São Paulo and Paris, Horta Osório today resides in Lisbon with his wife and three children. With the river, the sea and the safe environment he is certain there is no better place to live.

But what does it take to make it the “perfect” city?
“More cosmopolitism, he believes. Within a few years Europe will be thought of more in terms of cities than of countries and Lisbon and Portugal can’t afford “to the miss the boat”. Competitiveness, above all in terms of human resource capabilities, is, in his opinion, a burning issue and one that should not go ignored in the policies of coming governments.

Horta Osório spends his spare time with his family, playing tennis, which he does twice a week, and reading tech magazines, or books on antiques. “I really like Portugal. We can boast some unique moments in our history, and there is no reason why this shouldn’t happen again. I’m really interested in Portugal’s history between the 15th and 18th centuries and the antiques I try to collect and learn about are linked to Portugal’s era of expansion, especially into Asia.”  And as for family holidays, something that he enjoys with heart and soul and without interruptions, these are spent indulging in another of his great passions – scuba diving.

Text  Sílvia de Oliveira
Photos  Paulo Barata