Filed by Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria, S.A.
Pursuant to Rule 425 under the Securities Act of 1933
Subject Company: Banco de Sabadell, S.A.
Commission File
No.: 333-281111
Blog The Pulse
Headline: An exciting future
Body:
Dear team,
Many of you have been coming back from vacation, especially those of you who live in the northern hemisphere, where it is still summer. I hope you had a
great time with your families and friends over the holidays - so needed to recharge our batteries and kick off the final part of the
year full of energy and enthusiasm. I had a wonderful vacation with my wife, Esma, and our twins.
We went to southern Turkey, as we usually do, to spend a few days.
This time has given me the opportunity to reflect on what a pivotal moment
this is for BBVA and I wanted to share it with you. I think the bank is in the best shape ever and delivering its best results in history. This is something remarkable.
First, we are exceeding all of our long-term goals. You probably remember that we set these goals for the 2021-2024 period. If nothing out of the
ordinary occurs, we will far surpass these targets. For example, in the first six months of the year, we added a record-breaking 5.6 million customers and channeled 46 billion in
sustainable business, ahead of the estimated pace to reach 300 billion between 2018 and 2025. We are the bank in the best position in the European financial industry in terms of
profitability and efficiency, with an ROTE that reached 20 percent in June, and an efficiency ratio to date of 39.3 percent, the best to date.
Second, we are delivering historic earnings. If we look at the accumulated
profit for the first half of the year, we earned nearly 5 billion (+29 percent yoy). In addition, we managed to increase lending by 10.7 percent yoy, with a significant
contribution from corporate loans. These results make it possible to increase distributions and create more value for shareholders. Just look at annual growth of tangible book value plus dividends per share: 20 percent! Yet again, far surpassing our
competitors.
All of this is possible thanks to a successful, pioneering strategy, the banks solid fundamentals and excellent work by
the team we form all together. We have to take advantage of this momentum and a great competitive advantage. There are no banks in Europe with the same growth-profitability binomial as BBVA.
And we will not settle. We think big. We want to continue growing in the markets where we operate, in a profitable way. We now have an enormous
opportunity for growth in Spain: the integration with Banco Sabadell, which will allow us to become the second largest financial institution in the country, with
a focus on growth in the SME segment in particular.
In this process, we received excellent news last Thursday. We now have the green light from the European Central Bank for the operation. A very significant milestone that underscores the robustness and
solvency of this project. Everything is moving ahead according to plan and the next steps needed are the approval of the Spanish competition authority (CNMC), the authorization of the Spanish financial markets regulator (CNMV), and the uptake of the
offer by Banco Sabadell shareholders representing the majority of its share capital (more than 50.01 percent).