A long-standing Merrill Lynch veteran is our banker of the week for his role in advising Banco Santander on its $2.7bn exchangeable bond sale to Qatar's sovereign wealth fund, demonstrating that the equity linked market can be used as an alternative to a straight block trade.

Martinez-Piqueras, who advised Santander on the convertible deal which was priced on Monday, is head of Iberia in Bank of America Merrill Lynch's Emea ECM team, which is headed by Craig Coben. He was promoted after the merger between Merrill Lynch and Bank of America. Prior to that, he ran equity derivatives and equity-linked teams out of Spain and Portugal at Merrill Lynch.