Organizational changes

Luisa Gómez Bravo will be the new CFO of the BBVA Group. She currently is the Global Head of Corporate & Investment Banking (CIB), the group’s wholesale banking unit. Gómez Bravo will replace Rafael Salinas Martínez de Lecea, who is stepping down from his executive duties after a successful career with the bank spanning over three decades. He will continue to be involved with the Group as a board member of Garanti BBVA. Furthermore, the current Head of Sustainability, Javier Rodríguez Soler, takes on the additional role of Head of CIB.

BBVA gives a new boost to its strategy, promoting sustainability to the highest level of the organization. Javier Rodríguez Soler, current country manager in the U.S., will head the new area, which aims to make BBVA the leading bank for clients in sustainability solutions. Separately, Jaime Sáenz de Tejada (CFO) and Rafael Salinas (CRO) are exchanging responsibilities.

It´s been found that 62.5 percent of organizations with more than 50,000 employees are already working in an Agile way, according to the Agile Maturity Index report. In collaboration with Workday, Opinno consultancy presented its conclusions of an analysis of 600 companies (260 Spanish) from various countries. BBVA, a pioneer in incorporating agile work forms in Spain, is positioned as a benchmark for success in its implementation.

BBVA has named Mario Pardo Bayona the new CEO of BBVA in Colombia. He will replace Óscar Cabrera, who is leaving the Group to take on new personal and professional challenges, following a successful career in both Spain and Latin America.

BBVA is to propose at the Annual General Meeting the appointments of Ana Revenga, Raúl Galamba and Carlos Salazar as new board members. With this announcement, BBVA fosters diversity of its highest decision-making governing body in several areas: female board members will now account for a third of the Board, meeting the goal set for 2020; and foreign board members will represent 40 percent. Areas of knowledge as relevant as sustainability will also be reinforced, especially from a social and aid development standpoint, as well as the global financial system and the Mexican financial sector, in particular. Following these changes, the Board will have two thirds of independent members.

BBVA USA said that Ignacio J. Carnicero is its new Chief Risk Officer, responsible for the bank’s enterprise risk management program, in news that was first announced to employees in early October 2019.

BBVA has appointed Peio Belausteguigoitia as head of BBVA Spain, replacing Cristina de Parias, who leaves her executive duties after a successful career of more than three decades both inside and outside BBVA. Cristina de Parias will remain involved with the Group as she will join the board of BBVA’s subsidiary in Mexico, once the necessary approvals have been obtained.

Integral to its business-wide deployment of agile methodologies, BBVA has to ensure that it has the appropriate skills on hand in order to advance its key strategic projects. To this end, the staffing process- an essential aspect of the bank’s cultural and organizational transformation -orchestrates the assignment of skilled resources.

BBVA hosted a meeting of the Excellence Club at the bank’s headquarters in Madrid. Over 60 corporate clients attended the event to discuss the challenges and opportunities posed by the transformation of working methods in organizations.

How does the BBVA Group select its strategic projects? The key lies in the Single Development Agenda, one of the fundamental pieces of BBVA’s agile transformation. The goal is to make the most of existing capacities in the organization and ensure that strategy and execution are correctly aligned.

In 2019, BBVA reached a landmark milestone: By incorporating agile methodology techniques into their daily business activities it transformed the way the Group's entire 33,000-strong central services division organizes itself and works. This achievement represents a decisive inflection point in BBVA’s transformation process and serves as an opportunity to reflect on the route that has led the bank so far.

Garanti BBVA appoints Recep Bastug as its new CEO, replacing Fuat Erbil. Recep Bastug also becomes the new Country Manager for BBVA in Turkey. The change is effective as of September 1st, subject to required regulatory approvals.

BBVA names David Puente as global head of Client Solutions, replacing Derek White. Ricardo Martín Manjón will become the new global head of Data.

The heart of the scrum work methodology is the sprint. The sprint is a miniproject nomore than one month (very short execution cycles – from one to four weeks), aimed atincreasing in value in the product we are building. All sprints have a definition andplanning that will help achieve the goals set.

BBVA Compass today named José Luis Elechiguerra as its Head of Business Development, where he will oversee the BBVA Group’s U.S. efforts around the ongoing digital transformation of its products and services.

The BBVA Group today named Javier Rodriguez Soler as CEO for BBVA Compass and country manager for the Group’s U.S. operations, following the appointment of Onur Genç as BBVA Group CEO. The appointment will provide continuity to the execution of the bank’s current strategy and continue the strong momentum the bank has built in the U.S.

Carlos Torres Vila, CEO and future executive chairman of BBVA, and Onur Genç, who will take over as CEO and is currently head of BBVA in the U.S., will do “extraordinary things” together with the rest of the BBVA team, said Francisco González, chairman of the Group, speaking at an IESE event in New York.

As of this morning, Anna Escobedo Cabral has become the chairwoman of the BBVA Microfinance Foundation (BBVAMF) Board of Trustees, after succeeding Claudio Gonzalez-Vega, who headed up the foundation's governance body since 2015. As the granddaughter of Mexican immigrants, humble origins led the new Board of Trustees’ chair to combine her studies with work and to become the first in her family to graduate from both high school and college.

The Board of Directors of BBVA approved the succession plan for the company’s chief executive officer (CEO). Onur Genç, who is currently the CEO of BBVA Compass and U.S. country manager for BBVA, will replace Carlos Torres Vila as Group CEO. The succession is expected to take place on Dec. 31, 2018.

Making BBVA Compass a better place to work is an inside job, and now team members have a new tool for offering feedback and suggestions about how to do just that.

The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) recently released research aimed at demonstrating the importance of digital transformation in corporate banking. In the research, BCG underscored the notion that for lasting and meaningful digital transformation, banks need to develop a clear vision for the future of banking, formulate a comprehensive strategy of how they will evolve alongside it, and plan their initiatives accordingly.

The objective is not an easy one to achieve: making sure that the products that reach the market are the ones customers need and demand. The task is even more complicated if production must be speeded up, in order to reach the market before the competition. Tech companies were pioneers in facing this challenge; they did so by using agile methods, a way of working that has played a key role in the success of companies like Google and Spotify, and which BBVA has made a fundamental tool in accelerating its digital transformation.

BBVA Compass further adopts a new internal workstyle aimed at providing the bank with the organizational structure and necessary competitive capabilities to collectively focus and quickly respond to the digital transformation within the U.S. banking arena.

Onur Genç’s appointment as BBVA Compass CEO and country manager marks the beginning of a new chapter for the BBVA Group’s franchise in the U.S. Genç is ready to take on the challenge of leading the digitization push, at a time when the prospects of rising interest rates could have a profound impact on the future of the industry. BBVA CEO Carlos Torres Vila, in Houston visiting the team at BBVA Compass, joined Genç for this interview. BBVA’s CEO underscored the bank’s commitment to the U.S. market, a region that accounted for 11 percent of the Group’s net attributable profit in 2016.

BBVA appoints Gloria Couceiro as Head of Shareholder and Investor Relations, within the financial unit led by Jaime Sáenz de Tejada.

BBVA Compass today named Garanti Bank’s Onur Genç as its next CEO and announced that Manolo Sánchez will become its non-executive chairman, strengthening the management structure of the BBVA Group’s U.S. franchise.

BBVA Global Head of Talent and Culture Ricardo Forcano visited the IESE Barcelona campus to share with the MBA candidates his impressions regarding the very special moment that the banking industry is currently undergoing.

Thierry Barbier has been appointed new Head of BBVA France replacing Gregoire de Lestapis. BBVA's French branch is focused mainly on corporate lending and investment banking activity and has around hundred employees.

BBVA CEO Carlos Torres Vila explained today the reasons that motivated the organization and management changes that the Group announced this week:  “We are making these changes to gain agility and efficiency,” he stressed.  “But both the strategy and the goals we defined a year ago remain the same, to become a better bank for our customers, bringing the age of opportunity to everyone.”