The Spanish bank will fight Andrea Orcel over a ruling that it must pay $76 million in financial amends for yanking the CEO job from under his feet.
Madrid-based Santander is poised to appeal a ruling two weeks ago that it must pay Andrea Orcel 67.8 million euros ($76.4 million) over a job offer that wasn't, «Reuters» (behind paywall) reported on Wednesday.
A veteran Italian dealmaker who now runs Unicredit, Orcel won damages over lost salary and moral harm for backtracking on its CEO job offer in 2018. He had left UBS, where he was investment banking chief and one of a group of potential successors as CEO, for the Santander job.
The case hinges on whether a four-page offer letter constituted a formal job offer or not. The issue is messy for Ana Botín, who had poached Orcel and presented him to media as Santander's next CEO in September of 2018.
