Who saw Santander coming for CLM?

We heard a whisper last Friday that Santander had acquired CLM Fleet Management – and confirmation arrived on Monday. But they kept it very quiet. What’s the motivation? As we see it, Adam Harley was brought in to create a corporate fleet team at Santander – no doubt to provide an offering for the bank’s larger customers – and having fleet management expertise is critical to such an operation.

CLM certainly has that. For the directors it’s been quite a journey. Executing an MBO from Maxxia in 2022 they have continued to build on the company’s expertise while expanding into the broker sector with a variety of products. Congratulations to them – quite a journey! Let’s see how the next part pans out.

Ralph Morton, editor