Boss of Santander UK reveals he WFH (2024)

The boss of Santander UK - who earns £3.3million a year - has admitted he works from home and wouldn't have accepted the job if he'd had to work in London five days a week.

Mike Regnier, the chief executive of one of Britain's biggest banks, spends up to two days a week working in the company's main offices in Milton Keynes and London.

For the rest of the week, the 52-year-old works from his home in Harrogate, North Yorkshire, or travels the country to visit branches and other satellite offices.

Regnier says he would not have accepted the job if he had to travel in for work everyday and says it is not 'absolutely vital' that people spend their entire working week in the office.

He was previously working as the chief executive of the Yorkshire Building Society, whose headquarters was located in the region, and lived in the country for two decades with his family.

But in April 2022, Regnier was lured to join Santander after the bank allowed him to work out of the office most of the time.

Speaking to the Guardian, Regnier said: 'I don't think it's absolutely vital that people spend all five days a week in the office as they did pre-Covid.

'And, actually, had it not been for Covid, I wouldn't have accepted this job, because I wouldn't have wanted to be away from home five days a week in London. That wouldn't have been good for the family or for me.'

The 19,000 staff members at Santander UK, which is owned by Spanish parent Banco Santander, are expected to be in the office two days a week.

Earlier this year, workers at Disney were demanded to return to the office for four-days-a-week after managing director Bob Iger said 'nothing can replace' staff being physically together.

Furthermore, Goldman Sachs chief executiveDavid Solomon said working from homewas an 'aberration' that was bad for collaboration and innovation.

But Regnier, a father-of-two, said he lost a lot of quality time with his own father, as would spendhours commuting by train to London from Leatherhead in Surrey in his role as an oil economist.

The chief executive made the move to Yorkshire 20 years ago after he and his wife decided they did not want to raise children in London.

He added: 'He was an amazing father. One of those people who's extremely hard-working and felt that was the most important thing in life. So [he was] not absent, but I probably didn't see as much of him as my kids see of me now.'

Regnier career initially began in consulting before he found his first senior role in Asda.

He was then convinced to switch careers and join the fast-growing HBOS bank - which was a successful bank in Halifax at the time - in 2006.

However, it went spectacularly wrong andHalifax Bank of Scotland's bosses accumulated£45bn in debts thatrequired a £20bn taxpayer bailout after an emergency takeover by Lloyds TSB in 2008.

The biggest thing Regnier learned from the experience was the 'importance of good culture in the banking sector'.

He then went on to joinTSB Bank, before being asked to join Yorkshire Building Society, where he was told he would have a shot at becoming chief executive - a role he held for five years between 2017 and 2021.

Surprisingly, Regnier had never intended to go into the financial world, having wanted to follow in the footsteps on hisgrandfather and become and engineer.

However, he was convinced to take a combined engineering, economics and management degree at Oxford after his father told him that 'in the UK, it's accountants who run industry'.

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