Banking Queen Botin Plans U.K. IPO in Santander Succession Test

Ana Patricia Botin, the boss’s daughter, has come to the U.K., where she will have the chance to prove she can lead the bank in Spain that her family has run for more than six decades.

With her appointment as chief executive officer of Banco Santander SA’s U.K. unit in November, Botin became the most powerful woman in London finance. Now, if she can repair the bank’s customer-service reputation and pull off an initial public offering, she will have improved her odds of succeeding her father, 76-year-old Chairman Emilio Botin, who built Santander into the euro region’s most valuable lender through more than $70 billion of acquisitions.