BBVA’s strategy to curb its exposure in the real estate market continues to bear fruit. The Group announced the sale of a 14 office-building portfolio in Spain, codenamed Project Boston.

The Observatorio Empresarial contra la Pobreza (Business Observatory to Combat Poverty), with the support of BBVA, has published a report entitled The road to youth employment. What can businesses do. The report addresses the problem of youth unemployment and its consequences from a number of angles.

The key to have the best professional team requires attracting, training and retaining talent. Aware of this, BBVA Corporate & Investment Banking, BBVA’s wholesale banking area, is announcing the fifth edition of its Graduate Training Programme, aiming at recruiting and developing the best junior talent available.

Mario Draghi did not announce any new changes in monetary policy at Thursday’s press conference, but the latest European Central Bank (ECB) meeting did lead to some updates. On the one hand, the ECB is more optimistic about economic growth. On the other, it is raising its 2017 inflation forecast to 1.7% (from 1.3% in December) due to growing energy prices, but it barely changed its core inflation projection. And last, but not least, it added some nuances to its wording, which could be the prelude to changes in its monetary policy,  BBVA Research notes in its ECB Watch report.

BBVA celebrates International Working Women’s Day with further progress as regards work/life balance, entrepreneurship and professional promotion. This is the right time to look back on one year of initiatives that promote female talent and try to mitigate the social injustices that affect women.

In a meeting organized by the Rafael del Pino Foundation to discuss the future of Europe, José Manuel González-Páramo said that the “European Union is more necessary today than ever” to rise up to find a solution to the Old Continent’s most pressing issues. According to BBVA’s Executive Board Director, the EU now faces the challenge, but also the opportunity, to plot its future without the UK, one of its traditional and more important, partners.

On the financial plane, BBVA’s Executive Board Director highlighted the EU’s achievements in its path towards building a banking union. However, he warned about the need to keep moving ahead with the reforms and completing the following stage in the process: the rollout of the EDIS, the European Deposit Insurance Scheme.