Santander adds to hires with Citi’s former payments boss

The bank’s appointment of a new head of transaction banking follows the appointment of a US boss and a new global head of financial institutions.

By Joe McGrath

Santander has snapped up the former director of Citi’s payments division – WorldLink – as its new head of transaction banking.

Michael Vallance joins as head of transaction banking and cash management for Santander across both the corporate and commercial bank.

Vallance was previously at Citi for seven years between 2007 and 2014, working initially as business development director for Citi’s Global Transaction Services team for the EMA region, before eventually becoming MD and Global Market Management head of WorldLink.

Over the past 12 months, he has been working for Capco’s Banking practice for as managing principal.

Vallance’s appointment comes three weeks after the Spanish bank announced it had promoted Mariano Urquiola – its former head of sales for GTB – to US head of global transaction banking.

Carlos Gutierrez was the previous head of GTB (US) moved to assume the position of global head of financial institutions at the bank’s GTB team in Madrid last month.

Also in July, Santander announced that blockchain guru and former JP Morgan Banker Blythe Masters had been appointed as a senior adviser on distributed ledger technology.

Both Santander and Vallance did not respond to a request for comment at the time of publication.

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