Santander sells half of securities custody business

• Warburg Pincus and Temasek lead the buyers group and the deal values the business at $1.3B. The unit has €738B in assets under custody and Santander (NYSE:SAN) says it will book a €410M ($556M) capital gain on the sale.
• The shedding of the asset should boost the bank's core equity capital ratio by 12 basis points, according to an analysis by Citigroup.
• An earlier report pegged the value of the unit at maybe as high as $1.4B.
• SAN +0.9% premarket