Close panel

Close panel

Close panel

Close panel

Finance

Finance

The B20 - or “G20 for businesses” - is a forum of private international companies that provides recommendations to the G20 to address the most relevant challenges of the global economic and financial agenda. This year, Saudi Arabia will preside over the meeting. BBVA has played a very active role in the B20 since 2015, thanks to BBVA Executive Board Member José Manuel González-Páramo, who serves as Vice Chair of the Finance and Infrastructure Task Force.

The new year kicked-off with a deluge of corporate issuances. Last week Europe’s bond market had its biggest week ever, with sales of new bonds totaling over €90 billion. Financial institutions accounted for approximately half of the total (€43 billion). BBVA issued two bonds that were warmly welcomed by investors.

According to BBVA Research’s latest Country Risk Quarterly Report, financial tensions have eased across all regions, markets, and asset classes with the exception of Latin America. Emerging Asia is the only region where all variables for the macroeconomic vulnerability radar analysis stand below their corresponding risk thresholds. Between 2018 and 2019 there were no significant changes to the degree of macroeconomic vulnerability across all developed economies, whereas within emerging regions, changes were concentrated in Latin America.

BBVA kicked off 2020 with a €1.25 billion non-preferred 7-year bond issue, the year’s first by a Spanish bank. The bond received a warm welcome from investors and was two-times oversubscribed, with demand exceeding €2.6 billion and drawing a high-quality order book. All this enabled BBVA to price the bond at 70 basis points over mid swap, compared to the initial guidance of 90 basis points.