Banco Santander SA, Spain’s biggest bank, agreed to purchase about $3.2 billion (€2.5 billion) in auto loans from Citigroup, expanding its US consumer-lending business. Santander Consumer USA, a Santander unit, will buy the loans from Citigroup’s CitiFinancial Auto. Santander and Citigroup have also entered into an agreement under which Santander will service a portfolio of about $7.2 billion of auto loans to be retained by Citigroup.

Santander, based in the Spanish city of the same name, is targeting growth in the US, which will contribute 5 per cent of group profit this year and as much as $1.15 billion in earnings by 2011, chairman Emilio Botin has said. – (Bloomberg)