Mergers and acquisitions

BBVA’s CEO, Onur Genç, spoke on Tuesday at a financial event held in London to address the need to consolidate large European banks capable of leading an increasingly competitive global market: “Europe needs larger, stronger and more efficient institutions to support economic growth.” The combination between BBVA and Banco Sabadell is a major step forward in this direction. Not only will it benefit Spain, but it will also make the bank a stronger competitor on the global stage, supporting SMEs and financing high-impact projects, explained BBVA’s CEO at the Global Banking Summit organized by the Financial Times.

The Directorate-General for Competition of the European Commission has concluded its review of the BBVA and Banco Sabadell transaction under the European Foreign Subsidies Regulation (FSR), without raising any objections.

The U.K.’s Prudential Regulation Authority has given green light to BBVA to take indirect control of TSB Bank plc, Banco Sabadell’s banking subsidiary in the United Kingdom. The authorization is one of the conditions to which the purchase offer to Banco Sabadell shareholders is subject and a necessary step to complete it, since TSB would become part of BBVA.

After receiving the authorization of Spain’s National Commission for Markets and Competition (CNMC in Spanish), BBVA finalized the purchase of Tree Inversiones Inmobiliarias SOCIMI from Merlin Properties. The company has 662 offices rented to BBVA.

Luisa Gómez Bravo, Global Head of BBVA Corporate & Investment Banking, is in attendance at the World Economic Forum held in the Swiss city of Davos and was one of the speakers at a round table on the mergers and acquisitions market titled 'Will the M&A Boom Last?'. After a record year of M&A deals in 2021, the current economic scenario augurs a decline in this market, due to its high exposure to the international geopolitical context. Even so, mergers and acquisitions continue to offer great opportunities in infrastructure, ESG projects and investment in real assets.

As a result of the voluntary takeover bid for the 50.15 percent that BBVA did not own in Garanti BBVA, the Group acquired shares of its Turkish unit, which account for 36.12 percent of its social capital, reaching a total stake of 85.97 percent.

BBVA has reached an agreement to purchase Tree Inversiones Inmobiliarias SOCIMI from Merlin Properties. The company has 665 offices rented to BBVA. These offices that currently belong to Merlin are part of the package that BBVA sold to Tree Inversiones in 2009-2019 under a sale and lease back contract.

The BBVA Group closed today the sale of its U.S. subsidiary to The PNC Financial Services Group, Inc., announced in November 2020. BBVA will continue operating in the U.S. through its broker-dealer BBVA Securities and the New York branch – from which it will provide wholesale banking services –, as well as the fintech investment fund Propel Venture Partners.

BBVA has signed the sale of a portfolio consisting of loans and real estate assets from Unnim for a gross total of approximately €700 million. The goal of the transaction is to reduce the exposure to non-productive assets.

This week, BBVA sold two of its largest portfolios of written-off loans. Following the sale of “Project Juno”, the bank signed the transfer of a portfolio comprised of loans to small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) with an approximate gross value of €2.1 billion.

BBVA has signed the sale of a written-off loan portfolio (mostly consumer loans) worth a gross total of €2.5 billion. The transaction is BBVA’s biggest ever of this kind to date.

BBVA has closed the transfer of most of the credits rights that comprise the Anfora portfolio. The transaction was announced in December 2018.

BBVA has signed an agreement to transfer a credit portfolio, which is composed by mortgages credits (mainly non-performing and in default), with an aggregate balance amounting to approximately €1.49 billion to Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB). The transaction is part of BBVA’s strategy to reduce to the fullest its exposure to real estate risks in Spain.

After obtaining the pertinent regulatory authorizations, BBVA Group has closed the sale of its 68.19% stake in BBVA Chile and other companies in the country to Scotiabank, for a total of about $2.2 billion. The transaction will yield capital gains of about €640 million and will have a positive impact on BBVA’s fully-loaded CET 1 capital ratio of about 50 basis points.

BBVA has agreed to sell a property development loan portfolio worth €1 billion (gross) in a deal that virtually puts the finishing touches to its strategy of reducing its real-estate risk in Spain in half the time initially expected. BBVA estimates that including all the operations announced since December 2016 it has cut its gross exposure to the sector by €20 billion.

BBVA won the Spanish Company category of the third annual Spanish-Turkish Official Chamber of Commerce and Industry prizes, which recognize achievements in promoting mutual understanding between the two countries. At the event, Jorge Sáenz de Azcúnaga, BBVA’s Director of Country Monitoring, said BBVA’s Turkish subsidiary Garanti Bank is one of the pillars of the group’s transformation.

BBVA today announced an agreement with a subsidiary of Cerberus Capital Management, L.P. (Cerberus) to create a joint venture (JV) for its real estate business in Spain, reducing almost entirely its exposure to non core real estate assets. On the closing of the operation, BBVA will sell an 80% stake in the JV to Cerberus for about €4 billion. The transaction marks a milestone in BBVA Group’s strategy.

BBVA received a binding offer from The Bank of Nova Scotia (Scotiabank) for its 68.19% stake in BBVA Chile and other related businesses such as the life insurance arm for about $2.2 billion (1.85 billion euros)¹. The offer does not include the automobile financing activity of Grupo Forum, that will continue to be 100% owned by BBVA.

The Corporate Finance business at BBVA started 2017 in as good as shape as it ended last year. In 2016, BBVA closed 18 deals in Spain, 10 in Mexico and six in Latin America. The start of 2017 was very busy, and the Bank "hopes to once again be the bank with the most closed deals in its core markets, especially in Spain and Mexico."

BBVA is one of the 40 institutions that invested in the financial technology innovator R3, which just completed two of three tranches in its Series A fundraising round. It raised a total of 107 million. With this investment, BBVA seeks to reinforce its commitment to R3, the largest consortium of global financial institutions collaborating to develop an industry platform and commercial applications for DLT.

 - Openpay is a Mexican startup that offers an advanced platform of physical and electronic payments for businesses. Created with software developers in mind, the platform offers a wide range of online payment solutions and functionalities, outstanding among which are its sophisticated anti-fraud models.

Currently, Openpay has a network of more than 15,000 payment reception points in Mexico, connected in real time through its Paynet network, and manages more than one million transactions a month. The Openpay platform is used by more than 1,000 businesses in Mexico, from startups to SMEs and large corporate clients.

- The synergies between BBVA Bancomer and Openpay will multiply the commercial capacities of both companies, complement their catalogue of products for corporate clients and allow them to strengthen their payment solutions.

- BBVA Bancomer supports the entrepreneur ecosystem through its Innovation Center and propels fintech companies with its Open Talent (OT) competition. It also promotes direct associations with startups to validate their business models and offers financial services to benefit customers. Openpay was a finalist in Open Talent 2015, in an event that involved 652 projects from 63 countries and close to 200 experts.

BBVA just announced the closing of the acquisition of an additional 9.95% stake in Turkey’s Garanti Bank’s capital after informing the CNMV in a relevant event.

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 BBVA Group sold a 1.7% stake in CNCB in the market for about €554 million,  with net capital gains of about €177 million and thus concluding the sale of nearly its entire stake in the Chinese bank. Since the beginning, the investment in CNCB as a whole has generated a positive cash flow for BBVA of about €1.3 billion.

As part of its ongoing efforts to accelerate transformation by growing its portfolio of digital businesses, BBVA has signed an agreement to acquire Mexican startup Openpay, a company that offers a broad range of advanced online payments solutions and functionalities.

BBVA has agreed to invest £45m (around €64m) for a 29.5% stake in Atom, the UK’s first mobile-only bank, which will launch in early 2016. The investment is part of BBVA’s strategy to lead financial services in the digital age.