Skip to content
Link copied to clipboard

Sidhu tried to buy Sovereign back from Santander: report

Former Sovereign Bank CEO Jay Sidhu tried to buy the Reading-based bank bank back from Spain's Banco Santander, Bloomberg reports.

Bloomberg News reports unnamed sources say former Sovereign Bank ceo Jay S. Sidhu mounted a last-ditch effort to buy his old bank back from Spain's giant Banco Santander. Story here.

If true, it's more evidence Sidhu is dating but not committing. He's tried to raise two bank investment funds over the past year; neither effort has been completed, given the tough deal market. He's also tried to buy at least one bank in Florida, according to SEC documents; that deal fell apart. Sidhu told me last month he'd like to buy a company and be a CEO again, but that it doesn't have to be a bank...

Santander has other problems at the moment, having plowed more than $3 billion of its Spanish clients' money into former Nasdaq chairman Bernard Madoff's phony hedge funds. Story here.

Santander says it wants Sovereign to be its U.S. base, but last I with spokesman Peter Grieff, the company hadn't decided whether it wants to run Sovereign from its official Philadelphia headquarters, or its actual base up in Reading, or from Boston, home to its top executives since Sidhu was pushed out.