Five years after merging most of Santander’s securities services business into Credit Agricole’s CACEIS entity in late 2019, Santander has now agreed to let go of the ownership stake of 30.5 per cent that it received in return. The deal, set to materialise during 2025, puts French bank Credit Agricole back in the position as CACEIS’s sole owner. The two groups’ existing joint venture for Latin America operations will stay.
The details were presented by CACEIS in a December press release.
Credit Agricole was the full owner of CACEIS also for a few years before the Santander transaction in 2019. It had grown its share through a series of transactions since CACEIS was created in 2005 on a 50/50 basis with fellow French cooperative bank group Caisse d’Epargne. The name is the combined acronym for Credit Agricole and Caisse d’Epargne Investor Services.
Per end-2023, CACEIS states that it held €4.7 trillion in assets under custody.
Mexico, Colombia and Brazil hosts the groups’ Latin American operations in the form of a joint venture that was formed in connection with the 2019 restructuring: S3 CACEIS, with S3 standing for Santander Securities Services, a brand used also before the CACEIS collaboration.
