Consumers might see their products at grocery stores across Texas, on airplanes, or at their factory nestled in Houston’s historic East End, an up-and-coming community undergoing a rebirth. Pita Pal Foods, LP is much more than a company producing a suite of Mediterranean products and gourmet foods:  it’s a symbol of how far East End has come.

Antoni Ballabriga, Global Head of Responsible Business at BBVA, took part this Tuesday in a regional roundtable on the progress of sustainable financing, in an event organized in Switzerland by the UNEP Finance Initiative (UNEP FI) in association with the Swiss Sustainable Finance platform (SSF).

The European Commission has published a legislative proposal to create a sort of European Securities and Exchange Commission – that is, a European agency that would centralize some of the stock exchange supervision competencies of the national authorities. Once it is approved, part of the activity that takes place on the European exchanges would come under control of the new European authority.

BBVA and BBVA Bancomer are piloting an FX matching application developed by Calypso Technology, a leading provider of cloud based cross asset trading software solutions for the financial markets, and enterprise software firm R3. The application, which runs on R3’s Corda platform and is facilitated by Calypso’s cloud services, has already been used by the two banks to match a test FX trade.

Non-performing assets, monetary policy and digitization are the three most pressing challenges that EU banks are facing, according to José Manuel González-Páramo. BBVA’s Executive Board Director participated in the annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the Institute of International Finance (IIF) that took place in Washington D.C. last week, which he attended together with a large delegation of BBVA executives.

For the European Central Bank, the relevance that fintech already has in the financial sector is becoming increasingly clear.  The latest example of this is the public consultation it has just launched to establish draft guides to bank licensing, not only for banks with traditional business models, but also for companies offering banking services based on innovative technologies, commonly known as fintech.

The European Central Bank has launched a public consultation on an addendum to its guidance to European banks on non-performing loans (NPL). The addendum specifies that as of January 1, 2018 banks must completely provision for the unsecured portion of all new NPLs after two years at the latest and for the secured portion after seven years at the latest.

The Financial Stability Board (FSB) is an international body that oversees the proper running of the financial system by promoting oversight and regulatory policies.

Last week, 12 Nobel laureates were named in a fresh round of Nobel Prize recognitions in scientific, cultural and academic achievements and innovation.

Garanti Bank, always focused on facilitating its customers’ lives with its approach of delivering innovative products and services, has launched a new service model with the aim of offering an all-around excellent banking experience. Within the scope of Garanti’s service model, which represents a new era in the Turkish banking sector, all Garanti branches are evolving into an innovative structure built on digitalization where the customers are able to benefit from all kinds of services in a one-stop banking system in the fastest and easiest manner.