The assembled finance professionals - representing the likes of Goldman Sachs and UBS - laughed and squirmed as Botin explained how Santander had managed to dodge the subprime bullet. He distilled his wisdom into three simple lessons:
One, if you don’t fully understand a product, don’t buy it.
Two, if you wouldn’t buy a product for yourself, don’t sell it.
And three, if you don’t know your customers very well, don’t lend them any money.
That was all very well - until the Madoff scandal broke last Friday.
Santander's own anticipated losses from the Madoff affair are tiny, at just E17m. The bank hasn't been a big lender to funds of hedge funds invested with the former Nasdaq chairman. But it seems to have forgotten Botin's second piece of advice, as Santander's clients have lost E2.3bn in the alleged fraud.
Moreover, Botin concluded his advice with a nod to Rudyard Kipling’s poem “If”, saying: “and if you do these three things, my son, you will be a better banker". As it happens, Botin's son and son-in-law are also victims of Madoff's apparent collapse. They run Spanish fund manager M&B Capital advisors, which has also lost money in the affair.
At least Botin is in good company. Other so-called "winners" from the banking crisis - HSBC, BNP Paribas and Unicredit - also have egg on their faces courtesy of Madoff. But none of them set themselves up for a fall quite so brazenly as the patriarch of Spanish banking.