42 Thursday February 3 2022 | the times
Business
Most of the £130 million accidentally
handed to customers by Santander UK
on Christmas Day has been clawed
back by the bank. It said that the money
— paid when a technical problem
caused the bank to duplicate payments
— had “largely been recovered, with
non-material amounts outstanding”.
The mistake, which was revealed by
Bill Gates has invested in a carbon
capture start-up. His Breakthrough
Energy Ventures fund has taken part in
an $80 million fundraising for Verdox, a
Massachusetts-based business whose
technology aims to remove carbon di-
oxide directly from the air.
Verdox was founded in 2019 and
Brian Baynes, its chief executive, said
that a recent breakthrough had helped
it to raise cash from investors. The
billionaire co-founder of Microsoft
provided an unspecified sum,
according to Bloomberg, which first
reported the capital-raising.
Momentum is building behind
carbon capture as governments strive
to cut emissions to net zero. Histor-
ically, carbon capture and storage was
regarded predominantly as a techno-
logy to clean up coal or gas-fired power
plants operating as the backbone of the
electricity system. In the longer term,Carbon captures attention
and investment of Gates
however, it could be used actively to re-
move emissions from the atmosphere.
The technology to capture carbon
varies depending on what is generating
the emissions. Some processes emit
fairly pure CO 2 , while others pump out
a mixture of gases. Conventional
carbon capture technologies use filters
to separate CO 2 from the gases emitted
from factories. It is an energy-intensive
process that uses solvents to extract
CO 2. The liquid is heated to release the
CO 2 , which is compressed and stored
underground.
Verdox, which is a spinout from the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
claims that its system is cheaper and
more efficient. It uses a special plastic,
which when charged with electricity,
can extract CO 2 from a mixture of
gases. A change in voltage releases the
CO 2.
According to Baynes, the new fund-
ing will sustain Verdox for between four
and five years.Simon DukeSantander UK retrieves most of
its accidental Christmas gifts
Ben Martin Banking Editor The Times, heaped embarrassment on
the bank. It meant that about 75,000
transactions with companies and indi-
viduals that Santander handled for
2,000 corporate customers were paid
twice.
Nathan Bostock, the boss of
Santander UK, said that accidentally
duplicated payments sometimes
happened, although not often at this
magnitude. “The scale of it is the un-
usual thing, the actual fact that it
happens is not so strange,” he said. “We
will naturally resolve the technical
issue and ensure that it doesn’t happen
again.”
He said that other banks had “all
been very supportive” in recovering the
money, but declined to say exactly how
much was still to be recouped. “These
things obviously take time,” Bostock
said. Asked whether some recipientswere refusing to hand the cash back, he
said: “Not that I’m aware of.”
Santander UK said yesterday that its
annual pre-tax last year had risen to
more than £1.8 billion from £508 mil-
lion in 2020, when the bank was
weighed down by provisions for poss-
ible loan losses from the coronavirus
pandemic.
Its latest figures have been boosted
by its decision to release £233 million of
those provisions after the economic
fallout from Covid-19 proved to be
lighter than feared.
The lender, the British division of
Santander, the Spanish banking group,
has been led by Bostock, 61, since 2014.
This is the last set of results from the
high street bank that he will oversee as
he is preparing to take up a new role in
the Spanish company running its
investment platforms. Mike Regnier,
50, who previously led Yorkshire Build-
ing Society, will take charge of Santan-
der UK at the beginning of April.
Santander created its British division
through its acquisitions of Abbey
National, Alliance & Leicester and the
savings book of Bradford & Bingley.
The Spanish bank, which has busi-
nesses spanning Europe and the
Americas, is led by Ana Botín, one of
the world’s most powerful financiers.
The wider group yesterday unveiled
an €8.1 billion annual net profit, revers-
ing a loss of nearly $8.8 billion that it
suffered a year earlier. Although its UK
business enjoyed a jump in full-year
earnings, analysts at Jefferies noted
that the €425 million of net profits the
division generated in the fourth quarter
was lower than expected.
Santander UK, like other high street
banks, has been cutting its branch net-
work as customers move online. It
closed 111 sites last year and cut its head
office space by 40 per cent. It said that
lower operating costs as a result should
help the business to counter the impact
of inflation this year. The lender said
that the pressure it faced from rising
competition in the UK mortgage
market was likely to be offset by the lift
it would enjoy from higher interest
rates. The Bank of England raised its
base rate from 0.1 per cent to 0.25 per
cent in December and will make a deci-
sion on rates today.M
erlin Entertainments
is to take over
Cadbury World under
a 50-year deal that
adds the attraction in
Bournville to a portfolio including
Legoland, Sea Life and Madame
Tussauds (Dominic Walsh writes).
Europe’s biggest theme park and
attractions operator is acquiring the
operations and brand licences forMerlin shoots for
the moon with
Cadbury World