PHILADELPHIA – Spanish bank Banco Santander S.A. has disclosed in a U.S. regulatory filing that it has purchased 5 million shares of Sovereign Bancorp. (NYSE: SOV) for $42.9 million, which boosts its ownership of Sovereign to 24.43 percent of the bank’s outstanding shares.
The latest purchase comes on top of 39 million shares that Santander purchased in May following Sovereign’s public offering of 179.69 million shares at $8 per share. Santander paid about $312 million in that purchase.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing of Santander’s increased stake last week follows the disclosure last month that the central bank of Norway owns 5 percent of the outstanding common shares of Philadelphia-based Sovereign Bancorp, the parent of Sovereign Bank, which is the third-largest bank in Rhode Island with $1.66 billion in deposits.
Sovereign recently reported a second-quarter profit of $127.44 million, a 13.57-percent decline from the year-ago period. Second-quarter earnings per diluted share were 22 cents, down 8 cents a share from a year earlier. But that still beat the 16-cents-per share consensus profit estimate of seven analysts who follow Sovereign.
Sovereign Bancorp Inc. (NYSE: SOV), the parent company of Sovereign Bank, is a $90 billion financial institution with nearly 800 community banking offices, more than 2,000 ATMs and about 12,000 employees mostly in the Northeast. For additional information, visit www.sovereignbank.com.
