Banco Santander SA’s head of U.S. real estate investment is reportedly leaving the firm after roughly two years.
Steffen Doyle, who works for the Spanish bank from New York, plans to leave the bank where he has led the real estate investment banking segment since September 2023, Bloomberg reported, citing anonymous sources.
Doyle’s arrival at Santander came as the bank moved to grow its investment banking business in the U.S. while consolidating several other business lines. He joined from Credit Suisse, where he spent seven years as the head of real estate investment banking, splitting time between New York and London, according to Doyle’s Linkedin profile.
He also previously held senior roles in London at Jefferies and Bank of America.
Santander declined to comment, and Doyle didn’t respond to a LinkedIn message Tuesday morning.
Two months before Doyle joined Santander in 2023, Reuters reported on plans to hire roughly 150 bankers to accelerate its U.S. investment banking business. At the time, Santander had recently hired more than 20 senior investment bankers in the country and said it was looking to bring in another 60 managing directors.
Santander doesn’t break down its investment results by country. It reported second-quarter net income of $3.9B on July 30, with $17.6B in revenue. Its stock price has more than doubled in the last 12 months, and it was trading up more than 1% midday Tuesday.
The bank sold a $1B portfolio of infrastructure loans to Blackstone in November. The deal included assets largely in the U.S. and Western Europe across digital infrastructure, renewable energy and the transportation sectors.
Santander Bank NA, the Spanish firm’s North American subsidiary, is unimpacted by Doyle’s exit and is pushing deeper into wealth management. Last year, it began building a 41-story tower on the site of its old office building in Miami, which the bank’s executives have described as a natural meeting point between the U.S., Latin America and Europe.