Madrid - While world leaders have fretted over a financial crisis that seemed to bring the global economy to the verge of collapse, Emilio Botin has kept his calm.

"Crisis? Who is in crisis?" the president of the Spanish banking giant Santander, whose capacity to weather the turmoil has impressed the world, asked in July.

"Not Santander," Botin answered his own question. "The crisis is like a child's fever. It starts very strong, then goes down."

Last week, the 74-year-old veteran banker spoke about the crisis with more concern, but dismissed talk of it originating in the United States or in subprime mortgages.

Banks had simply forgotten what their business was basically about, committing "excesses" and investing in "opaque financial structures" instead of focusing on "fundamentals" like relations with the client, Botin complained.

His speech was soon being analyzed by financial experts trying to understand why Santander has emerged as one of the big winners of the crisis, snapping up troubled banks as if it were immune to the problems that sent them tumbling.

Botin, who turned Spain's seventh-largest bank into a global behemoth in two decades, has risen to one of the world's most respected bankers.

But request an interview with him, and you are firmly told not to harbour any such hopes.

The saga of the Botin banking dynasty usually becomes visible only through the rare public appearances of Botin or his comely daughter Ana Patricia, president of the Santander subsidiary Banesto and her father's likely successor.

A somewhat squat, balding and austere man, Botin is known both as a "patron" - an old-time boss running the Santander imperium like his personal fiefdom - and an innovative modern executive.

What is now the largest eurozone bank by market capitalization was founded by a group of businessmen in the northern coastal city of Santander in 1857.

Botin's grandfather, the first banker Emilio Botin, presided over the modest entity in the early 20th century, and his father - also named Emilio Botin - turned it into a national player.

With three generations of banking experience in his genes, Emilio Botin III began his career at the family bank at age 24 and climbed upwards until taking the reins from his father at age 52.

The law and economics graduate faced the challenge of stepping out of his father's shadow, which he has done with extraordinary success, displaying a combination of caution, ruthlessness and daring that rocked Spain's stale banking world.

Botin launched innovations such as high-interest accounts and low- interest mortgages, turned Santander into Spain's top bank by absorbing rivals such as Banesto and the Banco Central Hispano in the 1990s, and expanded into Latin America.

Since the 2004 acquisition of Abbey National in Britain, Santander has soared also outside the Spanish-speaking world, taking advantage of the financial crisis with agreements to buy Alliance and Leicester, the savings business of Bradford and Bingley in Britain and Sovereign Bancorp in the United States.

Botin has been accused of wrongdoing including misappropriation of funds to give huge pay-offs to two departing executives, but was cleared of charges.

The man whom some regard as the real power in Spain has maintained friendly relations with both the former conservative and the current Socialist government. "Politicians pass, he remains," a collaborator observed.

Father of six children with marchioness and arts patron Paloma O'Shea, Botin has given several of his offspring high positions within the Santander structure, prompting some to accuse him of nepotism while others say keeping the bank a family affair makes decision-making more efficient.

The secret of Santander's success is seen as lying mainly in its focus on retail banking, shunning high-risk assets - "never buy an instrument that you don't understand," Botin advises -, carefully weighing risks and Spain's conservative banking regulations, which have helped to protect the entire sector from the crisis.

Santander's biggest asset, however, is probably Botin himself, who admits to "living for banking."

A keen golfer and hunter, Botin does not hesitate to cancel a hunting expedition, phone his associates at odd hours or to call snap meetings on Sundays if a deal is in sight.

Frugal in his habits, Botin is reputed to be so spendthrift that he even asked about the cost of a golf ball which was being given away as a promotion, though he does have a weakness for fine wine.

"He who occupies the terrain first and waits for the enemy is in the strongest position," Botin reportedly told one meeting of executives.

The quote was from The Art of the War, a two-millennia-old Chinese military handbook which the banker reads from time to time. (dpa)