Santander Totta set to appoint the first woman CEO of a large bank in Portugal

Portugal’s banking sector is not exactly known for placing women in high places, but that looks set to change with the expected announcement that Isabel Guerreiro is tipped to succeed Pedro Castro e Almeida at the helm of Santander Totta.

If so, she would become the first woman to lead a large bank in Portugal according to the news agency Bloomberg.

Castro e Almeida is set to leave the bank in Portugal to take up a role as director of risk for the bank on an international level.

The bank has not made any comments, but insiders are said to believe that Santander Totta has been preparing for succession for some months and Isabel Guerreiro, 53, is in pole position to take over as CEO of one of Portugal’s largest banks.

Isabel Guerreiro has been with Santander since 2005 and has been an executive director at the bank since 2019 and is currently vice-president of the executive commission.

In 2020 she was appointed director of Bank Digital Transformation and is also Head of Retail and Transformation as well as having a broad experience in retail banking strategy.

Pedro Castro e Almeida, who has led Totta since 2019, is the favourite to succeed Mahesh Aditya as Chief Risk Officer (CRO) of the Santander group. Mahesh Aditya is expected to be appointed CEO of Santander in the UK after the Spanish bank revealed earlier this month that Mike Regnier would be stepping down as head of Santander UK.

If this change is confirmed, the Portuguese manager will be responsible for the risk management of the operations of the entire group, with functions of identification, evaluation and mitigation of financial, strategic and operational risks.

 And he will join another Portuguese at the top of Santander’s global hierarchy, Manuel Preto, who in the summer left the position of CFO of the bank in Portugal for the position of the group’s Director of Accounting.