BBVA (Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria) is a Spanish bank that earns most of its money outside Spain. In 2025 it reported gross income of ~$41.7 billion (EUR36.931 billion) and net attributable profit of ~$11.9 billion (EUR10.511 billion), the highest in its history, with 127,174 employees and 81.2 million active customers. Mexico alone produced ~$5.95 billion (EUR5.264 billion) of that profit.
From Bilbao in 1857 to BBVA in 1999
The oldest institution in the group is Banco de Bilbao, created in 1857 after the city's Board of Trade promoted a bank that could issue banknotes and discount commercial bills for local merchants. Banco de Vizcaya followed in 1901. The two Basque banks spent most of the twentieth century as rivals and merged in 1988 to form Banco Bilbao Vizcaya. In 1999 BBV merged with Argentaria, the group Spain had assembled from state-owned lenders such as Banco Exterior, Banco Hipotecario and Caja Postal, and the combined bank took the name Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria. Emilio de Ybarra, who chaired BBV, and Francisco Gonzalez, who chaired Argentaria, became co-chairmen, and Pedro Luis Uriarte stayed on as chief executive until the end of 2001. BBVA counts more than one hundred institutions in that corporate line.
Mexico is the engine
The defining deal came in 2000, when BBVA capitalized Bancomer with USD1.4 billion and merged it with its own Mexican bank, BBV-Probursa, to create Grupo Financiero BBVA Bancomer. In February 2004 it offered USD4.1 billion in cash for the roughly 41 percent of the Mexican bank it did not yet own, ending with close to 99 percent. BBVA Mexico is now the largest bank in the country, and in 2025 it delivered ~$5.95 billion (EUR5.264 billion) of net attributable profit, about half the group total, on a balance sheet growing faster than Spain's. The concentration cuts both ways: the peso's depreciation is why group gross income rose 4.1 percent in reported euros in 2025 while rising 16.3 percent at constant exchange rates.
Turkey is the volatile bet
In November 2010 BBVA agreed to pay ~$4.74 billion (EUR4.195 billion), about USD5.84 billion, for 24.9 percent of Turkiye Garanti Bankasi, buying 18.6 percent from General Electric and 6.3 percent from the Dogus group and funding the purchase with a rights issue of about $5.65 billion (EUR5 billion). It raised the stake over the next decade, and a tender offer completed in May 2022 took the holding to 85.97 percent. Turkish inflation then forced BBVA to apply IAS 29 hyperinflation accounting, which restates local assets and earnings and held reported Turkish results down for several years. In 2025 Turkey contributed ~$910 million (EUR805 million) of net attributable profit, 31.8 percent more than in 2024 in constant euros, helped by a smaller hyperinflation charge.
The American detour
BBVA spent 2004 to 2007 buying its way into the US Sunbelt, adding Valley Bank, Laredo National Bank, Texas Regional Bancshares, State National Bancshares and finally Compass Bancshares of Birmingham, Alabama for USD9.6 billion. The franchise never matched Mexico's returns, and in November 2020 BBVA agreed to transfer it to PNC Financial Services for USD11.6 billion in cash, a price the bank noted was close to half its own market capitalization at the time. The deal closed on June 1, 2021, BBVA received about USD11.5 billion, equivalent to ~$10.8 billion (EUR9.6 billion), and the money went into buybacks, dividends and lending in the markets it kept.
Spain and the Sabadell attempt
Spain is the second profit pool, worth ~$4.72 billion (EUR4.175 billion) in 2025. To add scale in lending to small and mid-sized Spanish companies, BBVA launched an all-share offer for Banco Sabadell on May 9, 2024. Spain's competition authority cleared it with commitments on April 30, 2025 after a second-phase review, and the government authorized the deal on June 24, 2025 with the unusual condition that the two banks keep separate legal personality, separate assets and management autonomy for three years, extendable by two. Sabadell's board resisted throughout. When the acceptance period closed, holders of 25.47 percent of voting rights had tendered, short of the minimum BBVA required and of the 30 percent that would have allowed a second attempt, and the offer lapsed on October 16, 2025 after seventeen months.
What the 2025 accounts show
Net interest income of ~$29.7 billion (EUR26.280 billion) was about 71 percent of gross income and fees of ~$9.28 billion (EUR8.215 billion) another 22 percent, so BBVA remains a spread-and-fee bank rather than a trading house. Operating expenses grew 1.0 percent in reported euros, which pulled the efficiency ratio to 38.8 percent, and ROTE reached 19.3 percent. Loan-loss impairments were ~$6.86 billion (EUR6.073 billion) with a cost of risk of 1.39 percent, while the bad-loan ratio improved to 2.7 percent with 85 percent coverage. CET1 capital ended the year at 12.70 percent, above both the 11.5 to 12.0 percent range management targets and the 9.28 percent regulatory requirement. BBVA set total 2025 distributions at half of profit, EUR0.92 per share in cash. In Europe it is adding customers without branches: the Italian digital bank launched in October 2021 passed 800,000 customers by its fourth anniversary, and a second digital bank opened in Germany in June 2025.
Risks on the table
Three things can move BBVA's reported earnings quickly. The first is currency, since the peso and the lira translate roughly half the group's profit into euros. The second is Spanish bank taxation, which cost ~$322 million (EUR285 million) booked in the first quarter of 2024 and about $359 million (EUR318 million) of tax in 2025. The third is litigation: in July 2026 Spain's National Court ordered BBVA and former chairman Francisco Gonzalez to stand trial over work commissioned from former police commissioner Jose Manuel Villarejo between 2004 and 2016, a case that is pending with no judgment issued. Against that, the first half of 2026 brought net attributable profit of ~$6.84 billion (EUR6.051 billion), up 11.1 percent, with ROTE of 22.2 percent, keeping the bank ahead of the plan it published in July 2025: about $54.2 billion (EUR48 billion) of cumulative profit for 2025 to 2028 and ~$40.7 billion (EUR36 billion) of capital available for distribution.
