Banco Santander chairman Emilio Botin dies aged 79

Emilio Botin, who was 79, died in Madrid on Tuesday evening, a spokesman for the company said.

The board will meet to appoint a successor on Wednesday.

Coming from a family of bankers hailing from the northern Spanish province of Santander, Botin will be most remembered for having had the foresight to go against received wisdom, investing in Brazil and the United Kingdom at the height of each country's most recent financial crisis.

In the process he created one of the world's largest and most solvent financial institutions, despite the upheavals seen in Spain's economy over the last few years as a result of a housing bubble - which he was canny enough to get in front of.

He famously offloaded many of the bank's real estate assets in Madrid several years before the onset of the real estate market crash. Nevertheless, like so many, even he may have underestimated just how severe the downturn would turn out to be.