Banco Santander SA Executive Chair Ana Botin said the lender’s efficiency will improve in the current quarter and she also said profit will increase for the year as a whole. “For the first quarter of 2026, we have continued the positive trends of previous years, growing both our customer base and revenue, while costs are expected to decline in constant euros year-on-year,” Botin said Friday in rem...
Banco Santander SA Executive Chair Ana Botin said the lender’s efficiency will improve in the current quarter and she also said profit will increase for the year as a whole. “For the first quarter of 2026, we have continued the positive trends of previous years, growing both our customer base and revenue, while costs are expected to decline in constant euros year-on-year,” Botin said Friday in remarks prepared for Santander’s annual general meeting. As a result, she anticipated “an improvement in efficiency of approximately 250 basis points.” Still, Botin also highlighted higher economic uncertainty, saying that “the world now faces the scenario of higher inflation and lower growth, threats that become more likely with each passing day.” Read More: Santander Vows €20 Billion in 2028 Profit After Webster Deal Santander earlier this year agreed to buy US lender Webster Financial Corp. for $12 billion in a deal that would mark the largest-ever takeover of a US lender by a continental European bank. It’s also the third transaction under Botin in less than a year after she sold a majority stake in Santander’s Polish unit to Austria’s Erste Group Bank AG for €7 billion ($8.1 billion) in April and subsequently bought the UK lender TSB from Banco Sabadell SA . The Spanish bank’s profitability has surged over the past few years amid higher interest rates. Its share price, which long trailed peers, more than doubled in 2025, turning the bank into continental Europe’s most highly-valued lender.
Rasi Bhadramani/iStock via Getty Images John Patrick Lee, CFA - For 70 years, VanEck has built its reputation on a simple principle. Identify structural change early and then build disciplined investment vehicles to express it. Early on, the firm's founder, John van Eck, had a high conviction belief in gold, right before one of the largest inflationary periods in modern history. He was right. We f...
Rasi Bhadramani/iStock via Getty Images John Patrick Lee, CFA - For 70 years, VanEck has built its reputation on a simple principle. Identify structural change early and then build disciplined investment vehicles to express it. Early on, the firm's founder, John van Eck, had a high conviction belief in gold, right before one of the largest inflationary periods in modern history. He was right. We focused on emerging markets before they were institutionalized. We leaned into semiconductors well before AI became mainstream. The pattern is consistent - recognize durable macro change; design intelligent exposure; execute with discipline. That brings us to today. We believe that India represents one of the next biggest structural opportunities available to investors. One that demands a purpose-built vehicle designed to capture India's long-term opportunity for investors. Angus Shillington - So I think the best place to start is to really understand the exceptional equity returns from India over the past 10 or 20 years. India's stock market returns, in US dollars, really have been remarkably close to those from the United States. And I look really over 5, 10 and 20 years, which is head-spinning in and of itself. So that's to say that very few other major markets even approach this level of performance. And that performance has not been driven by speculation or cyclicality; it's been driven by sustained compounding of real returns in both the cases of the US and India. And just to drill down into that, if the aggregate of companies in the index delivers return on equity or return on capital employed that exceeds GDP return, that excess return compounds up over time. You don't see that really anywhere else in the world at these kinds of levels. Other markets tend to have cyclicality from commodities or from interest rates. Very rarely do you see this compounding structure as you do in the United States and India on the same broad level. And that's really just persistent high...
Richard Drury/DigitalVision via Getty Images Total construction spending rises, with months prior revised higher; power, residential and public lead, manufacturing lags. This data continues to be in the right direction for reshoring supply lines, AI spend and a residential recovery. Power site construction is outpacing manufacturing, likely due to the completion of earlier supply line initiatives,...
Richard Drury/DigitalVision via Getty Images Total construction spending rises, with months prior revised higher; power, residential and public lead, manufacturing lags. This data continues to be in the right direction for reshoring supply lines, AI spend and a residential recovery. Power site construction is outpacing manufacturing, likely due to the completion of earlier supply line initiatives, while the greenfield manufacturing sites (site clearing and prep work), which have been spurred by tariff policy, have yet to ramp up to the more expensive stage of actual construction. It can take more than 1yr to acquire sites to manufacture post-Trump's tariff policy, develop and gain approvals for site plans before even the site clearing and prep work begin. But, we do see the ramp in construction employment even with the implementation of deportations for illegal workers that have been part of this report. All in all, reshoring and tariff policy should continue to boost these numbers, real personal income, and retail sales 3yr-5yr in my estimation. Alta Equipment Group ( ALTG ), InTest Corp. ( INTT ), Builders FirstSource ( BLDR ), QXO ( QXO ), Core & Main( CNM ), Exponent ( EXPO ), XPO ( XPO ), RXO ( RXO ), GXO ( GXO ), Myers Industries ( MYE ), Core Molding Technologies ( CMT ) and others will benefit from the trends shown. Original Post Editor's Note: The summary bullets for this article were chosen by Seeking Alpha editors.