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The star investment banker isn’t getting the CEO job he so covets because Santander can't afford him. Andrea Orcel fell prey to ill-conceived and often absurd circumstances.

Santander and Andrea Orcel shocked high finance by dissolving their agreement for the Italian investment banker to become CEO of the Spanish bank earlier this year. At reportedly as much as $50 million, Orcel was simply too expensive to «make whole» after deserting UBS.

The reversal is one of the few times that a company has backtracked over a prominent hire after bowing, pre-emptively, to shareholders on pay. Orcel is a victim on several levels – including one of his own making.

1. Prey to Naivete

How can a seasoned, crisis-weathered star investment banker like Orcel break it off with UBS and sign a contract with Santander without having pored over the financial minutiae beforehand? Santander’s Botins and Orcel have long maintained close ties, but it is still extraordinarily naïve of the 55-year-old banker as well as the bank to not have spoken openly about money before they agreed to the move – to much fanfare – in September.

2. Susceptible to Mentality

Orcel is after the money and perhaps status of Santander, not the actual job. What other conclusions can one draw from the fact that the investment banker prefers to protect his carefully accumulated vested shares from UBS rather than taking a cut for the sake of career advancement? The choice lays bare the basic mechanics of investment banking: you get what you pay for. Orcel has his price, and anyone not willing to pony up doesn’t deserve him, is the underlying message.

3. Victim of Cultural Gap

Had Orcel defected to, say, J.P. Morgan and not Santander, the move from UBS would have passed without incident. The next investment bank to hire him would have «made him whole,» or reimbursed him for vested shares that he had to leave behind. Not at Santander, a predominantly retail bank in crisis-battered Spain. There, the cut-throat ways of Wall Street or London’s City bankers don’t wash.