Garanti Bank signed an agreement with the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) for 5-year term funding in the amount of Euro 75 million equivalent under the Covered Bond Programme. Thanks to this financing, the first transaction settled with EBRD in TL and covered bond format, Garanti aims to boost the expansion of Green Mortgage loans and to protect the future generations with environmentally-friendly buildings.

Argentina and Brazil are finally pulling out of recession and driving the economic growth in Latin America as a whole this year, despite the slowdown in other countries in the region. According to BBVA Resarch’s ‘Latin America Economic Outlook’ Q3 report, the region will grow 0.8% in 2017 and 1.7% in 2018.

BBVA Frances has completed a capital increase of 75.8 million shares, including 66 million ordinary sares, and the remainder in shares offered to investment banks through a greenshoe option. At closing market prices, the transaction was valued at $400 million.  The BBVA Group affiliate will use the transaction to support the bank’s growth, taking advantage of the improved outlook for Argentina´s economy and financial system.

Ricardo Gómez Barredo was there for the birth of BBVA (through the merger of BBV and Argentaria), a Group he has been associated with for more than two decades.Now he is in charge of functions that are so critical to a bank like liaising with supervisors, working out financial information and reporting.Professionally, he describes himself as very demanding of himself. He thinks that the best part of his professional experience has always been “the people I’ve been lucky enough to work with”.

The financial crisis has had dire consequences on the banking sector’s landscape.  Of the 8,600 entities that operated in Europe in 2008, only 6,500 remained at the beginning of this year.  In addition, these banks now have to operate under a regulatory framework that’s much stricter than the one that existed before the crisis, in a market that has also changed.  All this is leading European banks to shift their business models.  Do they now have a more retail-minded profile than before the crisis?  That’s what it looks like.

BBVA has signed the first green loan in the project finance format with the Italian energy company Terna. The funding has been structured into a loan A for 56 million dollars awarded by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and a loan B for 25 million dollars entirely subscribed by BBVA, which has also headed the green structuring of the funding and acted as the Green Loan Coordinator.

The European Commission just unveiled a new directive on corporate governance, and more specifically on shareholders' rights, which will have to be transposed nationwide by June 2019. The Commission’s initiative serves a dual purpose:  It wants to promote the use of new technologies in the corporate governance of companies while increasing the commitment to transparency among institutional investors, asset managers and the companies in which they invest.

The future of mobile banking will come down to user experience, personalization and how, in the future, banks will create new sources of value for customers through digital partnerships, according to Forrester Research analyst Aurélie L’Hostis.

When BBVA Compass South Alabama Market CEO Claire McCarron got her first job in Commercial banking, she didn’t guess that her undergraduate psychology degree would be just as useful as her MBA, but after 30 years in banking, she’s grateful for both.

The experts at Blockchain Day 1 all regretted that the speculative aspects of blockchain technology could mask its main benefits.